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JOHN MARCH MONT’S LEGACY 


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BY MISS M. E. BRADDON. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE MAN WITH THE BANNER. 

The history of Edward Arundel; second son of Christopher 
Arundel Dangerfield Arundel, of Dangerfield Park, Devonshire, 
began on a certain dark winter’s night upon which the lad, still 
a school-boy, went with his cousin, Martin Mostyn, to witness 
a blank verse tragedy at one of the London theaters. 

There are few men who, looking back at the long story of 
their lives, cannot point to one page in the record of the past at 
which the actual history of life began. The page may come in 
the very middle of the book perhaps; perhaps almost at the end. 
But let it come where it will, it is, after all, only the actual 
commencement. At an appointed hour in man’s existence the 
overture which has been going on ever since he was boru is 
brought to a sudden close by the sharp vibration of the prompt¬ 
er s signal bell, the curtain rises and the drama of life begins. 
Very insignificant sometimes are the first scenes of the play- 
commonplace, trite, 'wearisome; but watch them closely, and in¬ 
terwoven with every word, dimly recognizable in every action, 
may be seen the awful hand of Destiny. The story has begun; 
already we, the spectators, can make vague guesses at the plot, 
and predicate the solemn climax; it is only the actors who are 
ignorant of the meaning of their several parts, and who are 
stupidly reckless of the obvious catastrophe. 

The story of j 7 oung Arundel's life began when he was a light¬ 
hearted, heedless lad of seventeen, newly escaped for a brief in¬ 
terval from the care of his pastors and masters. 

The Jad had come to London on a Christmas visit to his 
father’s sister, a good-natured widow, with a great many sons 
and daughters, and an income only large enough to enable her 
to keep the appearances of wealth essential to the family pride 
of one of the Arundels of Dangerfield. 

Laura Arundel had married a Colonel Mostyn, of the East 
India Company’s service, and had returned from India after 
h wandering life of some years, leaving her dead husband behind 




2 


JOHN MARCHMONT' S LEGACY . 

her, and bringing away with her five daughters and three sons, 
most of whom had been born under canvas. . 

Mrs. Mostyn bore her troubles bravely, and contrived to do 
more with her pension, and an additional income of three hun¬ 
dred a year from a small fortune of her own, than the most con¬ 
summate womanly management can often achieve. Her house 
in Montague Square was elegantly furnished, her daughters 
were exquisitely dressed, her sons sensibly educated, her dinners 
well cooked. She was not an agreeable woman; she was, per¬ 
haps, if anything, too sensible—so very sensible as to be obvi¬ 
ously intolerant of anything like folly in others. She was a good 
mother, but by no means an indulgent one. She expected her 
sons to succeed in life, and her daughters to marry rich men; 
and would have had little patience with any disappointment in 
either of these reasonable expectations. She was attached to 
her brother, Christopher Arundel, and she was very well 
pleased to spend the autumn months at Dangerfield. where the 
hunting breakfasts gave her daughters an excellent platform for 
the exhibition of charming demi-toilets, and social and domestic 
graces, perphaps more dangerous to the susceptible hearts of .rich 
young squires than the fascinations of a valse a deux temps or an 
Italian scena. 

But the same Mrs. Mostyn, who never forgot to keep up her 
correspondence with the owner of Dangerfield Park, utterly ig¬ 
nored the existence of another brother, a certain Hubert Arun¬ 
del, who had, perhaps, much more need of her sisterly friend¬ 
ship than the wealthy Devonshire squire. Heaven knows, the 
world seemed a lonely place to this younger son, who had been 
educated for the church, and was fain to content himself with a 
scanty' living in one of the dullest and dampest towns in fenny 
Lincolnshire. His sister might have very easily made life much 
more pleasant to the rector of Swampington and his only daugh¬ 
ter; but Hubert Arundel was a great deal too proud to remind 
her of this. If Mrs. Mostyn chose to forget him—the brother 
and sister had been loving friends and dear companions long 
ago under the beeches at Dangerfield—she was welcome to do 
so. She was better off than him; and it is to be remarked that 
if A’s income is three hundred a year, and B’s a thousand, the 
chances are as seven to three that B will forget anv old intimacy 
that may have existed between himself and A. Hubert Arun¬ 
del had been wild at college, and had put his autograph across so 
many oblong slips of blue paper, acknowledging value received 
that had been only half received, that by the time the claims of 
all the holders of these portentous morsels of stamped paper had 
been satisfied, the younger son's fortune had melted away, leav¬ 
ing its sometime possessor the happy owner of a pair of pointers, 
a couple of guns by crack makers, a good many foils, single¬ 
sticks, boxing-gloves, wire masks, basket helmets, leather leg- 
guards, and other paraphernalia, a complete set of the old 
Sporting Magazine from 1792 to the current vear. bound in scar¬ 
let morocco, several boxes of very bad cigars, a Scotch terrier, 
'd a pipe of undrinkable port. 

\all these possessions only the undrinkable port now re- 


JOHN MARCH MONTS' LEGACY. 


3 


mained to show that Hubert Arundel had once had a decent 
younger son’s fortune, and had succeeded most admirably in 
making ducks aud drakes of it. The poor about Swampington 
believed in the sweet red wine, which had been specially con 
cocted for Israelitish dealers in jewelry, cigars, pictures, wines, 
and specie. They smacked their lips over the mysterious liquid, 
and confidently affirmed that it did them more good than all 
the doctor’s stuff the parish apothecary could send them. Poor 
Hubert Arundel was well content to find that at least this 
scanty crop of corn had grown up from the wild oats he had 
sown at Cambridge. The wdne pleased the poor creatures who 
drank it, and was scarcely likely to do them any harm; and 
there was a reasonable prospect that the last bottle would by 
and by pass out of the rectory cellars, and with it the last token 
of that bitterly regretted past. 

I have no doubt that Hubert Arundel felt the sting of his only 
sister’s neglect, as only a poor and proud man can feel such an 
insult; but he never let any confession of this sentiment escape 
his lips; and wffien Mrs. Mostyn, being seized with a fancy for 
doing this forgotten brother a service, wrote him a letter of in¬ 
solent advice, winding up with an offer to procure his only child 
a situation as nursery-governess, the rector of Swampington 
only crushed the missive in his strong hand, and flung it into 
his studv-fire, with a muttered exclamation that sounied terri¬ 
bly like an oath. 

“A nursery- governess!” he repeated, savagely; “yes; an 
underpaid drudge, to teach children their A B C, and mend their 
frocks and make their pinafores. I should like Mrs. Mostyn to 
talk to my little Livy for half an hour. I think my girl would 
have put the lady down so completely by the end of that time, 
that weshould never hear any more about nursery-govern esses.” 

He laughed bitterly as he repeated the obfloxious phrase; but 
his laugh changed to a sigh. 

Was it strange that the father should sigh as he remembered 
how T he had seen the awful hand of Death fall suddenly upon 
younger and stronger men than himself? What if he were to 
die, and leave his only child unmarried ? What would become 
of her, with her dangerous gifts, with her fatal dowry of beauty, 
and intellect, and pride? 

“But she would never do anything w’rong,” the father 
thought. Her religious principles are strong enough to keep 
her right under any circumstances, in spite of any temptation. 
Her sense of duty is more powerful than any other sentiment. 
She would never be false to that; she would never be false to 
that.” 

In return for the hospitality of Dangerfield Park, Mrs. Mostyn 
was in the habit of opening her doors "to either Christopher 
Arundel or his sons whenever any one of the three came to Lon¬ 
don. Of course she infinitely preferred seeing Arthur Arundel, 
the elder son and heir, seated at her well-spread table, and flirt¬ 
ing wuth one of his pretty cousins, than to be bored with his 
rackety younger brother, a noisy lad of seventeen, with no bet¬ 
ter prospects than a commission in her majesty’s service, and a 


4 JOHN MARCHMONTS LEGACY. 

hundred and fifty pounds a year to eke out his pay; but she was, 
notwithstanding, graciously pleased to invite Edward to spend 
his Christmas holidays in her comfortable household ; and it was 
thus it came to pass that on the 29th of December, in the year 
1838, the story of Edward Arundel’s life began in a stage-box at 

Drury Lane Theater. „ . , . ( 

The box had been sent to Mrs. Mostvn by the tashionable [ 
editor of a fashionable newspaper; but that lady and herdaugh- ^ 
ters being previously engaged had permitted the two boys to ^ 

avail themselves of the editorial privilege. > 

The tragedy was the dull production of a distinguished liter- 
arv amateur, and even the great actor who played the principal 
character could not make the performance particularly enliven¬ 
ing. He certainly failed in impressing Mr. Edward Arundel, 
who flung himself back in his chair and yawned dolefully dur¬ 
ing the earlier part of the entertainment. 

“ It ain’t particularly jolly, is it, Martin ?” he said, naively. 

“ Let’s go out and have some oysters, and come in again just 
before the pantomime begins.” 

“ Mamma made me promise that we wouldn't leave the thea¬ 
ter till we left it for good, Ned,” his cousin answered; “and 
then we’re to go straight home in a cab.” 

Edward Arundel sighed. 

“I vvi h we hadn’t come till half-price, old fellow,” he said 
drearily. “If I’d known it was to be a tragedy, I wouldn’t have 
come away from the square in such a hurry. I wonder why 
people write tragedies, when nobody likes them?” 

He turned his back to the stage, and folded his arms upon the 
velvet cushion of the box preparatory to indulging himself in a 
deliberate inspection of the audience. Perhaps no brighter face 
looked upward that night toward the glare and glitter of the 
great chandelier than that of the fair- n aired lad in the stage - 
box. His candid blue eyes beamed with a more radiant sparkle 
than any of the myriad lights in the theater; a nimbus of golden 
hair shone about his broad white forehead; glowing health, 
careless happiness, truth, good-nature, honesty, boyish vivacity, 
and the courage of a young lion—all were expressed in the fear- - 
less smile, the frank, yet half-defiant gaze. Above all, this lad 
of seventeen looked especially what he was—a thorough gentle- . 
man. Martin Mostyn was prim and effeminate, precociously 
tired of life, precociously indifferent to everything but his own 
advantage; but the Devonshire boy’s talk was still fragrant with 
the fresh perfume of youth and innocence, still gay with the 
joyous recklessness of early boyhood. He was as impatient for 
the noisy pantomime overture, and the bright troops of fairies 
in petticoats of spangled muslin, as the most inveterate cockney 
cooling his snub nose against the iron railing of the gallery. 
He was as ready to fall in love with the painted beauty of tl i 
ill-paid ballet girls, as the veriest child in the wide circle of 
humanity about him. Fresh, untainted, unsuspicious, he looked 
out at the world, ready to believe in everything and everybody. 

“How you do fidget, Edward!” whispered Martin Mostyn, 
peevishly; “why don’t you look at the stage ? It’s capital fun,’ 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY . 


5 


“ Fun!” 

“ Yes; I don’t mean the tragedy, you know; but the supernumer¬ 
aries. Did you ever see such an awkward set of fellows in all 
your life? There’s a man there with weak legs and a heavy 
banner that I’ve been watching all the evening. He’s more fun 
than all the rest of it put together.” 

Mr. Mostyn being of course much too polite to point out the 
man in question, indicated him with a twitch of his light eye¬ 
brows; and Edward Arundel, following that indication Singled 
out the banner-holder from a group of soldiers in mediaeval 
dress, who had been standing wearily enough upon one side of 
the stage during a long strictly private and confidential dialogue 
between the princely hero of the tragedy and his accommo¬ 
dating satellites. The lad uttered a cry of surprise as he looked 
at the weak-legged banner-holder. 

Mr. Mostyn turned upon his cousin with some vexation. 

“I can’t help it, Martin,” exclaimed young Arundel; “I 
can’t be mistaken—yes—poor fellow, to think that he should 
come to this! you haven’t forgotten him, Martin, surely?” 

“ Forgotten what—forgotten whom ? My dear Edward, what 
do you mean ?” 

“ John Marchmont, the poor fellow who used to teach us 
mathematics at Vernon’s; the fellow the governor sacked be¬ 
cause-” 

“Well, what of him/’ 

“The poor chap with the banner,” exclaimed the boy, in a 
breathless whisper; “ don’t you see, Martin? didn’t you recog¬ 
nize him ? It’s Marchmont, poor old Marchmont, that we used 
to chaff, and that the governor sacked because he had a con¬ 
stitutional cough, and wasn’t strong enough for his work.” 

“Oh, yes, I remember him well enough,” Mr. Mostyn an¬ 
swered, indifferently. “Nobody could stand his cough, you 
know; and he was a vulgar fellow, into the bargain.” 

“He wasn't a vulgar fellow,” said Edward, indignantly; 
“there, there's the curtain down again: he belonged to a good 
family in Lincolnshire, and he was heir-presumpti ve to a stun¬ 
ning fortune. I’ve heard him say so twenty times.” 

Martin Mostyn did not attempt to repress an involuntary 
sneer, which curled his lips as his cousin spoke. 

“Oh, I dare say jgpu’ve heard him say so, my dear boy,” he 
murmured, supercmously. 

“ Ah, and it was true,” cried Edward; “ he wasn’t a fellow to 
tell lies; perhaps he’d have suited Mr. Vernon better if he had 
been. He had bad health, and was weak, and all that sort of 
thing; but he wasn’t a snob. He showed me a signet-ring once 
that he used to wear on his w atch-chain ” 

“A silver watch-chain,” simpered Mr. Mostyn, “just like a 
carpenter’s.” 

“ Don’t be such a supercilious cad, Martin. He was very 
kind to me, poor Marchmont; and I know I was always a 
nuisance to him, poor old fellow; for you know I never could 
get on with Euclid. I’m sorry to see him here. Think, Martin, 


6 JOHN MARCHMONT S LEGACY. 

what an occupation for him! I dcm’t suppose he gets more than 
nine or ten shillings a week for it.” , 

“ A shilling a night is, I believe, the ordinary remuneration of 
a stage-soldier. They pav as much for the real thing as for the 
sham, vousee; the defenders of our country risk their lives for 
about the same consideration. Where are von going, Ned ?” 

Edward Arundel had left his place, and was trying to undo 
the door of the box. 

“ To see if I can get at this ooor fellow.’* 

“ You persist in declaring, then, that the man with the weak 
legs is our old mathematical drudge? Well. I shouldn’t wonder. 
The fellow was coughing all through the five acts, and that’s 
uncommonly like Marchmont. You're surely not going to 
renew your acquaintance with him ?” 

But young Arundel had just succeeded in opening the door, 
and he"left the box without waiting to answer his cousin’s ques¬ 
tion. He made his way very rapidly out of the theater, and 
fougbt manfully through the crowds who were waiting about 
the pit and gallery doors, until he found himself at the stage 
entrance. He bad often looked with reverent wonder at the 
dark portal; but he had never before essayed to cross the sacred 
threshold. But the guardian of the gate to this theatrical par¬ 
adise, inhabited by fairies at a guinea a week, and baronial re¬ 
tainers at a shilling a night, is ordinarily a very inflexible individ¬ 
ual, not to be corrupted by any mortal persuasion, and scarcely 
corruptible by the more potent influence of gold or silver. Poor 
Edward’s half a crown had no effect whatever upon the stern 
doorkeeper, who thanked him for his donation, but told him 
that it was “ agen his orders to let anybody go up stairs.” 

“But I want to see someone so particularly,” the boy said, 
eagerly. “ Don’t you think you could manage it for me, you 
know ? He’s an old friend of mine—one of the supernu—what’s- 
its-names?” added Edward, stumbling over the word. “ He 
carried a banner in the tragedy, you know; and he’s got such 
an awful cough, poor chap.” 

“ The man as carried the banner with a awful cough,” said 
the doorkeeper, reflectively; “ why, I’m blest if it ain’t Barking 
Jeremiah.” 

* ‘ Barking Jeremiah!” 

“ Yes, sir. They calls him Barking because he’s allers coughin’ 
his poor weak head off; and they calls him Jeremiah because 
he’s always doleful. And I never did see such a doleful chaD. 
certainly.” 

“ Oh, do let me see him,” cried Mr. Edward Arundel. “ I 
know you can manage it; so do, that’s a good fellow. I tell you 
he’s a friend of mine, and quite a gentleman too. Bless you. 
there isn’t a move in mathematics he isn’t up to; and he’ll come 
into a fortune some of these days-” 

•• Yes,” interrupted the door-keeper, sarcastically, “ I’ve 
heerd that. They chaffs him about that up-stairs. He’s allers 
n* a hout bein’ a gentleman and belongin’ to gentlemen, and 
all that; but you’re the first gentleman as have ever as’t after 
him. 


JOHN MARCHMONT S LEGACY, 


7 


“ And can I see him?” 

“ I’ll do my best, sir. Here you, Jim,” said the door-keeper, 
addressing a dirty youth, who had just nailed an official announce¬ 
ment of the next morning’s rehearsal upon the back of a stony¬ 
hearted swing door, which was apt to jam the fingers of the un¬ 
initiated, “ what’s the name of that super with the jolly bad 
cough, the one they call Barking-” 

“ Oh, that's Morti-more.” 

“ Do you know if he’s on in the first scene?” 

“ Yes. He’s one of the demons; but the scene’s just over. Do 
you want him ?” 

“ You can take up this young gentleman’s card to him, and 
tell him to slip down here if he’s got a wait,” said the door¬ 
keeper. 

Mr. Arundel handed his card to the dirty boy. 

“ He’ll come to me fast enough, poor fellow,” he muttered. 
“ I usen’t to chaff him as the others did, and I’m glad I didn’t, 
now.” 

Edward Arundel could not easily forget that one brief scru¬ 
tiny in which he had recognized the wasted face of the school¬ 
master’s hack, who bad taught him mathematics only two years 
before. Could there be anything more piteous than that degrad¬ 
ing spectacle? The feeble frame, scarcely able to sustain that 
paltry one-sided banner of calico and tinsel; the two rude daubs 
of coarse vermilion upon the hollow cheeks; the black smudges 
that were meant for eye-brows; the wretched scrap of horse-hair 
glued upon the pinched chin in dismal mockery of a beard; and 
through all this the pathetic pleading of large hazel eyes, 
bright with the unnatural luster of disease, and saying per¬ 
petually, more plainly than words can speak, “ Do not look at 
me: do not despise me; do not even pity me. It won’t last 
long.” 

The fresh-hearted school-boy was still thinking of this when 
a wasted hand was laid lightly and tremulously on his arm, 
and looking up he saw a man in a hideous mask and a tight-fit¬ 
ting suit of scarlet and gold standing by his side. 

“I’ll take off my mask in a minute, Arundel.” said a faint 
voice, that sounded hollow and muffled, within a cavern of 
pasteboard and wicker-work. “It was very good of you to 
come round; very, very good!” 

“ I was so sorry to see you here, Marchmont; I knew you in a 
moment, in spite of the disguise.” 

The supernumerary had struggled out of his huge head-gear 
by this time, and laid the fabric of papier-mache and tinsel care¬ 
fully aside upon a shelf. He had washed his face before putting 
on the mask, for he was not called upon to appear before a 
British public in martial semblance any more upon that even¬ 
ing. The pale, wasted face was interesting and gentlemanly, 
not by any means handsome, but almost womanly in its soft¬ 
ness of expression. It was the face of a man who had not yet 
seen his thirtieth birthday; who might never live to see it, Ed¬ 
ward Arundel thought, mournfully. 

“ Why do you do this, Marchmont?” the boy asked, bluntly. 


JOHN MARCHMONT S LEGACY . 


Because there was nothing else left for me to do,” the stage- 
demon answered, with a sad smile. “ I can’t get a situation in 
a school, for my health won’t suffer me to take one; or it won t 
suffer my employer to take me, for fear ot my falling ill upon nis 
hands, which comes to the same thing; so I do a little copying 
for the law-stationers, and this helps out that, aod I get on, as 
well as I can. I wouldn’t so much mind if it wasn t for—- 

He stopped suddenly, interrupted by a paroxysm of coughing. 

“If it wasn’t for whom, old fellow?” 

“ My poor little girl; my poor little motherless Mary. 

Edward Arundel looked grave, and perhaps a little ashamed 
of himself. He had forgotten until this moment that his old 
tutor had been left a widower at four-and-twenty, with a little 
daughter to support out of his scanty stipend. 

“Don’t be down-hearted, old fellow,” the lad whispered, ten¬ 
derly; “ perhaps I shall be able to help you, you know. And 
the little girl can go down to Dangerfield; I know my mother 
would take care of her, and will keep her there till you get 
strong and well. And then you might start a fencing-room, or 
a shootiug-gallery, or something of that sort, at the West End; 
and I’d come to you, and bring lots of fellows to you, and you’d 
get on capitally, you know.” 

Poor John Marchmont, the asthmatic supernumerary, looked, 
perhaps, the very last person in the world whom it could be pos¬ 
sible to associate with a pair of foils, or a pistol and a target; 
but he smiled faintly at his old pupil’s enthusiastic talk. 

“ You were always a good fellow, Arundel,” he said, gravely. 
“ I don’t suppose I shall ever ask you to do me a service; but if, 
by arid by. this cough makes me knock under, and my little 
Polly should be left—I—I think you’d get your mother to be 
kind to her, wouldn’t you, Arundel?” 

A picture rose before the supernumerary’s weary eyes as be 
said this; the picture of a pleasant lady whose description he 
had often heard from the lips of a loving son, a rambling old 
mansion, wide-spreading lawns, and long arcades of oak and 
beeches leading away to the blue distance. If this Mrs. Arun¬ 
del, who was so tender and compassionate and gentle to every 
red-cheeked cottage girl who crossed her pathway—Edward had 
told him this very often—would take compassion also upon 
this little one! If she would only condescend to see the child, 
the poor pale neglected flower, the fragile lily, the frail exotic 
blossom, that was so cruelly out of place upon the bleak path¬ 
ways of life. 


“ If that’s all that troubles you,” young Arundel cried eagerly, 
“ you may make your mind easy, and come and have some oys¬ 
ters. We’ll take care of the child. I'll adopt her. and my 
mother shall educate her, and she shall marry a duke. Run 
away now, old fellow, and change your clothes, and come and 
have oysters, and stout out of the pewter.” 

Mr. Marchmont shook his head. 

My time’s just up,” he said; “ I’m od in the next scene. It 
was very kind of you to come round, Arundel; but this isn’t 
exactly the best place for you. Go back to your friends, my 


JOHN MARCHMONT* S LEGACY. 


9 


dear boy. and don’t think any more of me. I’ll write to von 
some day about little Mary.” 

“ You’ll do nothing of the kind,” exclaimed the boy. “ You’ll 
give me your address instanter, and I’ll come to see you the first 
thing to-morrow morning, and you’ll introduce me to little 
Mary; and if she and I are not the best friends in the world, I 
shall never again boast of my successes with lovely woman. 
What’s the number, old fellow?” 

Mr. Arundel had pulled out a smart morocco pocket-book and 
a gold pencil-case. 

“ Twenty-seven Oakley Street, Lambeth. But I’d rather you 
wouldn’t come, Arundel; j our friends wouldn’t like it.” 

“ My friends may go hang themselves. I shall do as I like, 
and I’ll be with you to breakfast, sharp ten.” 

The supernumerary had no time to remonstrate. The prog 
ress of the music, faintly audible from the lobby in which this 
conversation had taken place told him that his scene was nearly 
on. 

“I can’t stop another moment. Go back to your friends, 
Arundel. Good-night. God bless you!” 

“ Stay; one word. The Lincolnshire property-” 

“ Will never come to me, my boy.” the demon answered 
sadly, through his mask; for he had been busy reinvesting him¬ 
self in that demoniac guise. “I tried to sell my reversion, but 
the Jews almost laughed in my face when they heard me cough. 
Good-night.” 

He was gone, and the swing-door slammed in Edward Arun¬ 
del’s face. The boy hurried back to his cousin, who was cross 
and dissatisfied at his absence. Martin Mostyn had discovered 
that the ballet-girls were all either old or ugly, the music badly 
chosen, the pantomime stupid, the sceDery a failure. He asked 
a few supercilious questions about his old tutor, but scarcely 
listened to Edward’s answers; and was intensely aggravated 
with his companion’s pertinacity in sitting out the comic busi¬ 
ness—in which poor John Marchmont appeared and reappeared; 
now as a well-dressed passenger carrying a parcel, which he de¬ 
liberately sacrificed to the felonious propensities of the clown, 
now as a policeman, now as a barber, now as a chemist, now as 
a ghost; but always buffeted, or cajoled, or bonneted, or im¬ 
posed upon; always piteous, miserable, and long-suffering; with 
arms that ached from carrying a banner through five acts of 
blank- verse weariness, with a head that had throbbed under the 
weight of a ponderous edition of pasteboard and wicker, with 
eyes that were sore with the evil influence of blue-fire and gun¬ 
powder smoke, with a throat that had been poisoned by sulphur¬ 
ous vapors, with bones that were stiff with the playful pommel¬ 
ing of clown and pantaloon; and all for—a shilling a night! 

CHAPTER II. 

LITTLE MARY. 

Poor John Marchmont had given his address unwillingly 
enough to his old pupil. The lodging in O kley Street was a 


10 


JOHN MARCHMONT 8 LEGACY. 

wretched back-room upon the second floor of a house, whose 
lower regions were devoted to that species of establishment 
commonly called a “ ladies’ wardrobe.” The poor gentlemau, 
the teacher of mathematics, the law-writer, the Drury Lane 
supernumerary had shrunk from any exposure of his poverty; 
but his pupil’s imperious good nature had overridden every ob¬ 
jection, and John Marchmont awoke upon the morning after the 
meeting at Drury Lane to the rather embarrassing recollection 
that he was to expect a visitor to breakfast with him. 

How was he to entertain this dashing, high-spirited young 
school-boy, whose lot was cast in the pleasant pathways of life, 
and who was, no doubt, accustomed to see at his matutinal meal 
such luxuries as John Marchmont had only beheld in the fairy¬ 
like realms of comestible beauty exhibited to hungry foot-pas¬ 
sengers behind the plate-glass windows of Italian warehouses? 

“ He has hams stewed in Madeira, and perigord pies, I dare 
say, at his A unt Mostyn's,” John thought, despairingly. “ What 
can I give him to eat ?” 

But John Marchmont. after the manner of the poor, was apt 
to overestimate the extravagance of the rich. If he could have 
seen the Mostyn breakfast then preparing in the lower regions 
of Montague Square, he might have been considerably relieved, 
for he would have only beheld mild infusions of tea and coffee, 
in silver vessels, certainly, four French rolls hidden under a 
glistening damask napkin, six triangular fragments of dry toast, 
cut from a stale, half-quartern, four new-laid eggs, and about 
half a pound of bacon cut into rashers of transcendental delicacy. 
Widow ladies who have daughters to marry do not plunge very 
deep into the books of Messrs. Fortnum Mason. 

“ He used to like hot rolls when I was at Vernon's,” John 
thought, rather more hopefully; “I wonder whether he likes 
hot rolls still ?” 

Pondering thus, Mr. Marchmont dressed himself—very neatly, 
very carefully; for he was one of those men whom even poverty 
cannot rob of man’s proudest attribute, his individuality. He 
made no noisy protest against the humiliations to which he was 
compelled to submit; he uttered no boisterous assertions of his 
own merit; he urged no clamorous demand to be treated as a 
gentleman in his day of misfortune; but in his own mild, unde¬ 
monstrative way he did assert himself, quite as effectually as if 
he had raved all day upon the hardship of his lot, and drunk 
himself mad and blind under the pressure of his calamities. He 
never abandoned the habits which had been peculiar to him 
from his childhood. He was as neat and orderly in his second- 
floor back as he had been seven or eight years before in his sim¬ 
ple apartments at Cambridge. He did not recognize that asso¬ 
ciation which most men perceive between povertv and shirt¬ 
sleeves, or poverty and beer. He was content to wear thread¬ 
bare cloth, but adhered most obstinately to a prejudice in favor 
of clean linen. He never acquired those lounging vagabond 
habits peculiar to some men in the day of trouble. Even among 
the supernumeraries of Drury Lane he contrived to preserve his 
self-respect; if they nicknamed him Barking Jeremiah, they 


JOHN MARCH MONTS LEGACY, 


11 


took care only to pronounce that playful sobriquet when the 
gentleman-super was safely out of hearing. He was so polite in 
the midst of his reserve that the person who could willfully 
have offended him must have been more unkindly than any of 
her majesty’s servants. It is true that the great tragedian on 
more than one occasion apostrophized the weak-kneed banner- 
holder as “BEAST,” when the super’s cough had peculiarly dis¬ 
turbed his composure; but the same great man gave poor John 
Marchmont a letter to a distinguished physician.compassionately 
desiring the relief of the same pulmonary affection. If John 
Marchmont had not been prompted by his own instincts to 
struggle against the evil influences of poverty, he would have 
done battle sturdily for the sake of one who was ten times 
dearer to him than himself. 

If he could have become a swindler or a reprobate—it would 
have been about as easy for him to become either as to have 
burst at once, and without an hours practice, into a full-blown 
Leotard or Olmar—Ins daughter’s influence would have held 
him back as securely as if the slender arms twined tenderly 
about him had been chains of adamant forged by an enchanter’s 
power. 

How could he be false to his little one, this helpless child, who 
had been confided to him in the darkest hour in his existence: 
the hour in which his consumptive wife had yielded to the 
many forces arrayed against her in life’s battle, and had left 
him alone in the world to fight for his little girl ? 

“ If I were to die I think Arundel’s mother would be kind to 
her,” John Marchmont thought, as he finished his careful toilet. 
“ Heaven knows I have no right to ask or expect such a thing; 
but she will be rich by and by, perhaps, and will be able to repay 
them.” 

A little hand knocked lightly at the door of his room while he 
was thinking this, and a childish voice said: 

“ May I come in, papa ?” 

The little girl slept with one of the landlady’s children in a 
room above her father’s. John opened the door, and let her in. 
The pale winterv sunshine, creeping] in at the curtainless win¬ 
dow. near which Mr. Marchmont sat, shone full upon the 
child’s face as she came toward him. It was a small, pale face, 
with singularly delicate features, a tiny straight nose, a pensive 
mouth, and large thoughtful hazel eyes. The child’s hair fell 
loosely upon her shoulders; not in those cork-screw curls so 
much affected by mothers in the humbler walks of life, nor yet 
in those crisp undulations lately adopted in Belgravian nurseries, 
but in soft silken masses, only curling at the extreme end of 
each tress. 

Miss Marchmont—she was always called Miss Marchmont in 
that Oakley Street household—wore her brown-stuff frock and 
scanty diaper pinafore as neatly as her father wore his thread¬ 
bare coat and darned linen. She was very pretty, very lady¬ 
like, very interesting; but it was impossible to look at her with¬ 
out a vague feeling of pain that was difficult to understand. 
You knew by and by why you were sorry for this little girl. 



12 JOHN MARCH MONT’S LEGACY. 

She had never been a child. That divine period of perfect inno¬ 
cence—innocence of all sorrow and trouble, falsehood and 
wrong-that bright holiday-time of the soul had never been 
hers. The ruthless hand of poverty had snatched away from 
her the gift which God had given her in her cradle; and at 
ei^ht years old she was a woman—a woman invested with all 
that is most beautiful among w T omanly attributes love, tender¬ 
ness, compassion, carefulness for others, unselfish devotion, un¬ 
complaining patience, heroic endurance. She was a woman by 
reason of all these virtues; but she was no longer a child. At 
three years old she had bidden farewell forever to the ignorant 
selfishness, the animal enjoyment of childhood, and had learned 
what it was to be sorry for poor papa and mamma; and from 
that first time of awakening to the sense of pity and love she 
had never ceased to be the comforter of the helpless young hus¬ 
band who was so soon to be left wifeless. 

John had been compelled to leave his child, in order to get a 
living for her and for himself in the hard service of Mr. Lau¬ 
rence Vernon, the principal of the highly select and expensive 
academy at which Edward Arundel and Martin Mostyn had 
been educated. But he had left her in good hands; and when 
the bitter day of his dismissal came, he was scarcely as sorry 
as he ought to have been for the calamity which brought him 
back to his little Mary. It is impossible for any words of mine 
to tell how much he loved the child; but take into consideration 
his hopeless poverty, his sensitive and reserved nature, his utter 
loneliness, the bereavement that had cast a shadow upon his 
youth, and you will perhaps understand an affection that was 
almost morbid in its intensity, and which was reciprocated 
most fully by its object. The little girl loved her father too 
much. When he was with her, she was content to sit by his 
side, watching him as he wrote; proud to help him, if even by 
so much as wiping his pens, or handing him his blotting-paper; 
happy to wait upon him, to go out marketing for him, to pre¬ 
pare his scanty meals, to make his tea, and arrange and rear¬ 
range every object in the slenderly furnished second-floor back 
room. They talked sometimes of the Lincolnshire fortune—the 
fortune which might come to Mr. Marchmont, if three people, 
whose lives were each worth three times John’s feeble existence, 
would be so obliging as to clear the way for the heir-at-law, by 
taking an early departure to the churchyard. A more practical 
man than John Marchmont would have kept a sharp eye upon 
these three lives, and by some means or other contrived to find 
out whether number one was consumptive, or number two drop¬ 
sical, or number three apoplectic; but John was utterly incap¬ 
able of any such Machiavellian proceeding. I think he some¬ 
times beguiled his weary walks between Oakley Street and 
Drury Lane by the dreaming of such childish day-dreams as I 
should be almost ashamed to set down upon this sober page. 

The three lives might all happen to be riding in the same ex¬ 
press upon the occasion of a terrible collision; but the poor fel¬ 
low’s gentle nature shrank appalled before the vision he had 
invoked. He could not sacrifice a whole trainful of victims 


JOHN MARCH MONT S LEGACY,\ 


18 


even for little Mary. He contented himself with borrowing a 
Times newspaper now and then, and looking at the top of the 
second column, with the faint hope that he should see his own 
name in large capitals, coupled with the announcement that by 
applying somewhere he might hear of something to his advan¬ 
tage. He contented himself with this, and with talking about 
the future to little Mary in the dim fire-light. They spent long 
hours in the shadowy room, only lighted by the faint flicker of 
a pitiful handful of coals; for the commonest dip-candles are 
sevenpence halfpenny a pound, and were dearer, I dare say, in 
the year ’38. Heaven knows what splendid castles in the air 
these two simple-hearted creatures built for each other’s pleas¬ 
ure by that comfortless hearth. I believe that, though the 
father made a pretense of talking of these things only for the 
amusement of his child, he was actually the more childish of 
the two. It was only when he left that tire-lit room, and went 
back into the hard, reasonable, commonplace world, that he 
remembered how foolish the talk was, and how it was impossi¬ 
ble—yes, impossible—that he, the law-writer and supernumer¬ 
ary, could ever come to be master of Marchmont Towers. 

Poor little Mary was in this less practical than her father. 
She carried her day-dreams into the street, until all Lambeth 
was made glorious by their supernal radiance. Her imagination 
ran riot in a vision of a happy future, in which her father would 
be rich and powerful. I am sorry to say that she derived most 
of her ideas of grandeur from the New Cut. She furnished the 
drawing-room at Marchmont Towers from the splendid stores 
of an upholsterer in that thoroughfare. She laid flaming 
Brussels carpets upon the polished oaken floors which her father 
had described to her, and hung cheap satin damask of gorgeous 
colors before the great oriel windows. She put gilded vases of 
gaudy artificial flowers on the high carved mantel-pieces in the 
old rooms, and hung a disreputable gray parrot—-for sale at a 
green-grocer’s, and given to the use of bad language—under the 
stone colonnade at the end of the western wing. She appointed 
the trades-people who should serve the far-away Lincolnshire 
household; the small matter of distance would, of course, never 
stand in the way of her gratitude and benevolence. Her papa 
would employ the civil green-grocer who gave such excellent 
half-pennyworths of water-cresses; the kind butter-man who 
took such pains to wrap up a quarter of a pound of the best 
eighteen-penny fresh butter for tne customer whom he always 
called “ little lady;” the considerate butcher who never cut more 
than the three-quarters of a pound of rump-steak, which made 
an excellent dinner for Mr. Marchmont and his little girl. Yes, 
all these people should be rewarded when the Lincolnshire prop¬ 
erty came to Mary’s papa. Miss Marchmont bad some thoughts 
of building a shop close to Marchmont Towers for the accommo¬ 
dating butcher, and of adopting the green-grocer’s eldest daugh¬ 
ter for her confidante and companion. 

Heaven knows how many times .the little girl narrowly es¬ 
caped being run over while walking the material streets in some 
ecstatic reverie such as thisl but Providence was very careful of 


14 


JOHN MARCHMONT S LEGACY, 


the motherless girl, and she always returned to Oakley Street 
with her pitiful little purchases of tea and sugar, butter and meat. 
You will say, perhaps, that at least these foolish day-dreams 
were childish; but I maintain still that Mary’s soul had long 
ago bade adieu to infancy, and that even in these visions she 
was womanly; for she was always thoughtful of others rather 
than herself, and there was a great deal more of the practical 
business of life mingled with the silvery web of fancies than 
there should havejbeen so soon after her eighth birthday. At 
times, too, an awful horror would quicken the pulses of her 
loving heart as she heard the hacking sound of her father's 
cough, and a terrible dread would seize her—the fear that John 
Marchmont might never Jive to inherit the Lincolnshire fortune. 
The child never said her prayers without adding a little extem¬ 
pore supplication, that she might die when her father died. It 
was a wicked prayer, perhaps; and a clergyman might have 
taught her that her life was in the hands of Providence; and 
that it might please Him who had created her to doom her to 
many desolate years of loneliness; and that it was not for her, 
in her wretched and helpless ignorance, to rebel against His 
divine will. I think if the Archbishop of Canterbury had driven 
from Lambeth Palace to Oakley Street to tell little Mary this he 
would have taught her in vain: and that she would have fallen 
asleep that night with the old prayer upon her lips, the fond, 
foolish prayer that the bonds which love had woven so firmly 
might never be roughly broken by death. 

Miss Marchmont had heard the story of last night’s meeting 
with great pleasure, though it must be owned she looked a little 
grave when she was told that the generous-hearted school-boy 
was coming to breakfast; but her gravity was only that of a 
thoughtful housekeeper, who ponders ways and means, and, 
even while you are telling her the number and quality of your 
guests, sketches out a rough ground plan of her dishes, ponders 
the fish in season, and the soups most fitting to precede them, 
and balances the contending advantages of Palestine and Juli¬ 
enne, or hare and Italian. 

“A ‘nice’ breakfast, you say, papa,” she said, when her 
father had finished speaking: “ then we must have water- 
cresses, of course .” 

“ And hot rolls, Polly, dear, Arundel was alwavs fond of 
hot rolls.” 

“And hot rolls, four for threepence halfpenny in the Cut.” 
I am ashamed to say that this benighted child talked as deliber¬ 
ately of the “Cut” as she might have done of the “Row," 
“ There’ll be one left for tea, papa; for we could never eat four 
rolls. They’ll take such a lot of butter, though.” 

The little housekeeper took out an antediluvian bead-purse 
and began to examine her treasury. Her father banded all his 
money to her, as he would have done to his wife: and Mary 
doled him out the little sums he wanted—monev for half ail 
ounce of tobacco, money for a pint of beer. There were no 
penny papers in those days, or what a treat an occasional Tele¬ 
graph would have been to poor John MarchmontI 


JOHN MARCH MONT S LEGACY, 15 

Mary had only one personal extravagance. She read novels— 
dirty, bloated, ungainly volumes—which she borrowed from a 
snuffy old woman in a little back street, who charged her the 
smallest hire ever known in the circulating library business, and 
who admired her as a wonder of precocious erudition. The only 
pleasure the child knew in her father’s absence was the perusal 
of these dingy pages; she neglected no duty, she forgot no ten¬ 
der office of ministering care for the loved one who was absent; 
but when all the little duties had been finished, how delicious 
it was to sit down to “Madelein the Deserted,’’and “Cosmos 
I the Pirate,” and to Jose herself far away in illimitable regions, 
peopled by wandering princesses in white satin, and gentle¬ 
manly bandits, who had been stolen from their royal fathers’ 
halls by vengeful hordes of gypsies. In these early years of 
poverty and loneliness John Maichmont’s daughter stored up, 
in a mind that was morbidly sensitive rather than strong, a 
terrible amount of dim poetic sentiment; the possession of which 
is scarcely, perhaps, the best or safest dower for a young lady 
who has life’s journey all before her. 

At half past nine o’clock all the simple preparations necessary 
for the reception of a visitor had been completed by Mr. March- 
moot and his daughter. Ail vestiges of John’s bpd had disap¬ 
peared; leaving, it is true, rather a suspicious-looking mahogany 
chest of drawers to mark the spot where once a bed had been. 
The window had been opened,"the room aired and dusted, a 
bright little fire burned in the shining grate, and the most brill¬ 
iant of tin tea-kettles hissed upon the hob. The white table¬ 
cloth was darned in several places; but it was a remnant of the 
small stock of linen with which John had begun married life; 
and the Trish damask asserted its superior quality, in spite of 
many darns, as positively as Mr. Marchmont’s good blood as¬ 
serted itself in spite of his shabby coat. A brown tea-pot full of 
strong tea, a plate of French rolls, a pat of fresh butter, and a. 
broiled haddock, do not compose a very epicurean repast; but 
Mary Marchmont looked at the humble breakfast as a prospect¬ 
ive success. 

“ We could have haddocks ever)' day at Marchmont Towers, 
couldn’t we, papa?” she said, naively. 

But the little girl was more than delighted when Edward 
Arundel dashed up the narrow staircase and burst into the room, 
fresh, radiant, noisy, splendid, better dressed even than the 
waxen preparations of elegant young gentlemen exhibited at the 
portal of a great outfitter in the New Cut, and yet not at all like 
either of those red-lipped types of fashion. How delighted the 
boy declared himself with everything! He had driven over in 
a cabriolet, and he was awfully hungry, he informed his host. 
The rolls and water-cresses disappeared before him as if by 
magic; little Mary shivered at the slashing cuts he made .at the 
butter; the haddock had scarcely left the gridiron before it was 
no more. 

“This is ten times better than AuDt Mostyn’s skinny break¬ 
fasts,” the young gentleman observed candidly. “You never 
get enough with her. Why does she say, ‘ .You won’t take an- 


16 JOHN MARCHMONT S LEGACY. 

other egg:, will you, Edward?’ if she wants me to have one? 
You should see our hunting-breakfasts at Dangerfield, March- 
mont. Four sorts of claret, and no end of Moselle and cham¬ 
pagne. You shall go to Dangerfield some day to see my 
mother, Miss Mary.” 

He called her “ Miss Mary,” and seemed rather shy of speak¬ 
ing to her. Her womanliness impressed him in spite of himself. 
He had a fancy that she was old enough to feel the humiliation 
of her father’s position, and to be sensitive upon the matter of 
the two-pair back; and he was sorry the moment after he had 
spoken of Dangerfield. 

“What a snob I ami” he thought; “always bragging of 
home.” 

But Mr. Arundel was not able to stop very long in Oakley 
Street, for the supernumerary had to attend a rehearsal at 
twelve o’clock; so at half-past eleven John Marchmont and his 
pupil went out together, and little Mary was left alone to clear 
away the breakfast, and perform the rest of her household 
duties. 

She had plenty of time before her, so she did not begin at 
once, but sat upon a stool near the fender gazing dreamily at 
the low fire. 

“How good and kind he is!” she thought; “just like Cosmos 
—only Cosmos was dark; or like Reginald Ravenscroft—but 
then he was dark too. I wonder why the people in novels are 
always dark? How kind he is to papa! Shall we ever go to 
Dangerfield, I wonder, papa and me? Of course I wouldn’t go 
without papa.” 


CHAPTER III. 

ABOUT THE LINCOLNSHIRE PROPERTY. 

While Mary sat absorbed in such idle visions as these, Mr. 
Marchmont and his old pupil walked tow ard Waterloo Bridge 
together, 

“I’ll go as far as the theater with you, Marchmont,” the boy 
said; “it's my holidays now, you know-, and I can do as I like. 
I’m going to a private tutor in another month, and he’s to pre¬ 
pare me for the army. I want you to tell me all about that 
Lincolnshire property, old boy. Is it anywhere near Swamp- 
ington ?” 

“Yes; within nine miles.” 

“Goodness gracious me! Lord bless my soul! what an ex¬ 
traordinary coincidence! My Uncle Hubert’s rector of Svvamp- 
ington—such a hole! I go there sometimes to see him and my 
cousin Olivia. Isn’t she a stunner, though! Knows more Greek 
and Latin than me, and more mathematics than you. Could 
eat our heads off at anything.” 

John Marchmont did not seem very much impressed by the 
coincidence that appeared so extraordinary to Edward Arundel; 
but, in order to oblige his friend, he explained very patiently 
and lucidly how it was that only three lives stood between him 



JOHN MARCHMONTS LEGACY . 1? 

and the possession of Marchmont Towers, and all lands and 
tenements appertaining thereto. 

Th e estate’s a very large one,” he said, finally, “ but the idea, 
of my ever getting it is, of course, too preposterous.” 

“Good gracious me! I don't see that at all,” exclaimed Ed¬ 
ward, with extraordinary vivacity. “ Let me see, old fellow; if 
T understand your story right, this is how the case stands: your 
first cousin is the present possessor of Marchmont Towers; he 
has a son fifteen years of age, who may or may not marry; only 
one son, remember. But he has also an uncle—a bachelor uncle 
—who, by the terms of your grandfather’s will, must get the 
property before you can succeed to it. Now, this uncle of the 
present possessor is an old man; of course he'll die soon. The 
present possessor himself is a middle-aged man; so I shouldn’t 
think he can be likely to last long. I dare say he drinks too 
much port, or hunts, or something of that sort; goes to sleep 
after dinner, andf does all manner of apoplectic things, I’ll be 
bound. Then there’s the son, only fifteen, and not yet marriage¬ 
able; consumptive, I dare say. Now, will you tell me the 
chances are not six to six he dies unmarried ? So you see, my 
dear old boy, you’re sure to get the fortune; for there’s nothing 
to keep you out of it, except-” 

“Except three lives, the wmrst of which is better than mine. 
It’s kind of you to look at it in this sanguine way, Arundel; but 
I wasn’t born to be a rich man. Perhaps, after all, Providence 
has used me better than I think. I mightn't have been happy 
at Marchmont Towers. I’m a shy, awkward, humdrum fellow. 
If it wasn’t for Mary’s sake-” 

“ Ah, to be sure!” cried Edward Arundel. “ You’re not going 
to forget all about—Miss Marchmont!” he was going to say 
“ little Mary,” but bad checked himself abruptly at the sudden 
recollection of the earnest hazel eyes that had kept wondering 
watch upon his ravages at the breakfast-table. “ I’m sure Miss 
Marchmont’s born to be an heiress; I never saw such a little 
princess.” 

“What!” demanded John Marchmont, sadly, “in a darned 
pinafore and a threadbare frbck ?” 

The boy’s face flushed, almost indignantly, as his old master 
said this. 

“ You don’t think me such a snob as to think I’d admire a 
lady ”—he spoke thus of Miss Mary Marchmont, yet midway be¬ 
tween her eighth and ninth birthday—“ the less because she 
wasn’t rich ? But of course your daughter will have the fortune 
by and by, even if-” 

He stopped, ashamed of his want of tact; for he knew John 
would divine the meaning of that sudden pause. 

“ Even if I should die before Philip Marchmont,” the teacher 
of mathematics answered, quietly. “ As far as that goes, Mary’s 
chance is as remote as my own. The fortune can only come to 
her upon the event of Arthur’s dying without issue, or, having 
issue, failing to eut off the^eutail, I believe they call it.” 

“ Arthur! that’s the son'of the present possessor?” 

“ Yes. If I and my poor little girl, who is delicate like her 


18 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 

mother, should die before either of these three men, there is an¬ 
other who will stand in my shoes, and who will look out per 
haps more eagerly than I have done for his chances of getting 
the property.” % 

“ Another!” exclaimed Mr. Arundel. “ By Jove. Marchmont, 
it’s the most complicated affair I ever heard of! It’s worse than 
those sums you used to s p t me in barter; ‘ If A sells B 999 Stil¬ 
ton cheeses at 9 l-2d a pound,’ and ail that sort of thing, you 
know. Do make me understand it, old fellow, if you can.” 

John Marchmont sighed. 

“ It’s a wearisome story, Arundel,” he said, I don’t know 
why I should bore you with it.” 

“ But you don’t bore me with it,” cried the boy, energetically. 
“I'm awfully interested in it, you know; and I could walk up 
and down here all day talking about it.” 

The two gentlemen had passed the Surrey toll gate of Water¬ 
loo Bridge by tins time. r ihe Southwestern terminus had not 
been built in the year ’38, and the bridge was about the quietest 
thoroughfare any two companions confidentially inclined could 
have chosen. The shareholders knew this, to their cost. 

Perhaps Mr. Marchmont might have been beguiled into re¬ 
peating the old story, which he had told so often in the dim 
fire-light to his little girl, but the great clock of St. Paul’s 
boomed forth the twelve ponderous strokes that told the hour 
of noon, and a hundred other steeples upon either side of the 
water, made themselves clamorous with the same announce¬ 
ment. 

‘ I must leave you, Arundel,” the supernumerary said, hur¬ 
riedly: he had just remembered that ic was time for him to go 
and be brow-beaten by a truculent stage-manager. “ God bless 
you, my dear boy! It was very good of you to want to see me; 
aud the sight of your fresh face has made me very happy. I 
should like you to understand all about the Lincolnshire prop¬ 
erty. God knows there’s small chance of its ever coming to me 
or to my child; but when I am dead and gone Mary will be left 
alone in the world, and it would be some comfort tome to know 
that she was not without one friend—generous and disinterested 
like you. Arundel—who, if the chance did come, would see her 
righted.” 

| “ And so I would,” cried the boy, eagerly. 

I His face flushed and his eyes fired. He was a preux chevalier 
already, in thought, going forth to do battle for a hazel-eyed 
mistress. 

“ 1*11 write the story, Arundel,” John Marchmont said; “ I’ve 
no time to tell it, and you mightn’t remember it either. Once 
more, good-bye! once more, God bless you!” 

“ Stop!” exclaimed Edward Arundel, 'flushing deeper red than 
before—he had a very boyish habit of blushing—“stop, dear 
old boy. You must borrow this of me, please. I’ve lots of 
them. I should only spend it on all sorts of bilious things; or 
stop out late and get tipsy. You shall pay me with interest 
when you get Marchmont Towers. I shall come and see you 
again soon. Good-bye.” 


JOHN MARCmWNT'S LEGACY. 


19 


The lad forced some crumbled scrap of paper into his old 
tutor’s hand, bolted through the toll-bar, and jumped into a 
cabriolet, whose high-stepping charger was dawdling along 
Lancaster Place. 

The supernumerary hurried on to Drury Lane as fast as his 
weak legs could carry him. He was obliged to wait fora pause 
in the rehearsal before he could find an opportunity of looking 
at the parting gift which bis old pupil had forced upon him. It 
was a crumpled and rather dirty five-pound note, wrapped round 
two half crowns, a shilling, and half a soverign. 

The boy had given his friend the last remnant of his slender 
stock of pocket-money. John Marchmont turned his face to 
the dark wing that sheltered him and wept silently. He was 
of a gentle and rather womanly disposition, be it remembered; 
and he was in that weak state of health in which a man’s eyes 
are apt to moisten, in spite of himself, under the influence of 
any unwonted emotion. 

He employed a part of that afternoon in writing the letter 
which he had promised to send to his boyish friend, 

*• My dear Arundel, —My purpose in writing to you to-day 
is so entirely connected with the future welfare of my beloved 
and only child that I shall carefully abstain from any subject 
not connected with her interests. I say nothing, therefore, 
respecting your conduct of this morning, which, together with 
my previous knowledge of your character, has decided me upon 
confiding, to you the doubts and fears which have long tor¬ 
mented me upon the subject of ray darling's future. 

‘•I am a doomed man, Arundel. The doctors have told me 
this; but they have told me also that though I can never escape 
the sentence of death which was passed upon me long ago, I 
may live for some years if I live the careful life which only a 
rich man can lead. If I go on carrying banners and breathing 
sulphur, I cannot last long. My little girl will be left penniless, 
but not quite friendless; for there are humble people, relatives 
of her poor mother, who would help her, kindly I am sure, in 
their own humble way. The trials which I fear for my orphan 
girl are not so much the trials of poverty as the dangers of 
wealth. If the three men who, on my death, would alone stand 
between Mary and the Lincolnshire property, die childless, my 
poor darling will become the only obstacle in the pathway of a 
man whom. I will freely own to you, I distrust. 

“ My father, John Marchmont, was the third of four brothers. 
The eldest, Philip, died, leaving one son, also called Philip, and 
the present possessor of Marchmont Towers. The second, 
Marmaduke. is still alive, a bachelor. The third, John, left four 
children, of whom I alone survive. The fourth, Paul, left a son 
and two daughters. The son is an artist, exercising his profes¬ 
sion now in London; one of the daughters is married to a parish 
surgeon, who practices at Stanfield, in Lincolnshire; the other is 
an old maid, and entirely dependent upon her brother. 

“ It is this man, Paul Marchmont, the artist, whom I fear. 

"Do not think me weak, or foolishly suspicious, Arundel, 


20 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


when I tell you that the very thought of this man brings the 
cold sweat upon my forehead, and seems to stop the beating of 
my heart. 1 know that this is a prejudice, and an unworthy 
one. Ido not believe Paul Marchmont is a good man; but I 
can assign no sufficient reason for my hatred and terror of him. 
It is impossible for you, a frank and careless boy, to realize the 
feelings of a man who looks at his only child, and remembers 
that she may soon be left helpless and defenseless to fight the 
battle of life with a bad man. Sometimes I pray to God that 
the Marchmont property may never come to my child after my 
death; for I cannot rid myself of the thought—may Heaven for¬ 
give me for its unworthiness!—that Paul Marchmont would leave 
no means untried, however foul, to wrest the fortune from her. 
I dare say worldly people would laugh at me for writing this 
letter to you, my dear Arundel; but I address myself to the best 
friend I have—the only creature I know whom the influence of 
a bad man is never likely to corrupt. Noblesse oblige! Iam 
not afraid that Edward Dangerfield Arundel will betray any 
trust, however foolish, that may have been confided to him. 

“ Perhaps, in writing to you thus, I may feel something of 
that blind hopefulness—amidst the shipwreck of all that com¬ 
monly gives birth to hope—which the mariner, cast away upon 
some desert island, feels when he seals his simple story in a bot¬ 
tle, and launches it upon the waste of waters that close him in 
on every side. Before my little girl is four years old you will 
be a man, Arundel; with a man's intellect, a man’s courage, 
and. above all, a man’s keen sense of honor. So long as my 
darling remains poor her humble friends will be strong enough 
to protect her; but if ever Providence should think fit to place 
her in a position of antagonism to Paul Marchmont—for he 
would look gupoi any one as an enemy who stood between him 
and fortune—she would need a far more powerful protector than 
any she could find among her poor mother’s relatives. Will you 
be that protector, Edward Arundel? I am a drowning man, you 
see, and catch at the frailest straw that floats past me. I be¬ 
lieve in you, Edward, as much as I distrust Paul Marchmont. 
If the day ever comes in which my little girl should have to 
struggle with this man, will you help her to fight the battle? 
It will not be an easy one. 

“ Subjoined to this letter I send you an extract from the copy 
of my grandfather’s will, which will explain to you how he left 
his property. Do not lose either the letter or the extract. If 
you are willing to undertake the trust which I confide to you 
to-day, you may have need to refer to them after my death. The 
legacy of a child’s helplessness is the only bequest which I can 
leave to the only friend I have. 

“ John Marchmont. 

“ 27 Oakley Street, Lambeth, Dec. 30, 1838.” 

“ EXTRACT. 

“ * I give and devise all that my estate known as Marchmont 
Towers and appurtenances thereto belonging to the use of 
my eldest son Philip Marchmont during his natural life with- 


JOHN MARCRMONT’S LEGACY. 21 

out impeachment of waste and from and after his decease 
then to the use of my grandson Philip the first son of my said 
son Philip during the term of his natural life without impeach¬ 
ment of waste and after the decease of my said grandson Philip 
to the use of the first and every other son of my said grand¬ 
son severally and successively according to their respective 
seniority in tail and for default of such issue to the use of all and 
every the daughters and daughter of my said grandson Philip 
as tenants in common in tail with cross remainders between or 
amongst them in tail and if all the daughters of my said grand¬ 
son Philip except one shall die without issue or if there shall be 
but one such daughter then to the use of such one or only 
daughter in tail and in default of such issue then to the use of 
the second and every other ^son of my said eldest son severally 
and successively according to his respective seniority in tail and 
in default of such issue to the use of all and every the daugh¬ 
ters and daughter of my said eldest son Philip as tenants in 
common in tail with cross remainders between or amongst 
them in tail and in default of such issue to the use of my sec¬ 
ond son Marmaduke and his assigns during the term of his 
natural life Without impeachment of waste and after his de¬ 
cease to the use of the first and every son of my said son Mar¬ 
maduke severally and successively acccording to their respect¬ 
ive seniorities in tail and for default of such issue to the use of 
all and every the daughters and daughter of my said son Mar¬ 
maduke as tenants in common in tail with cross remainders be¬ 
tween or amongst them in tail and if all the daughters of my 
said son Marmaduke except one shall die without issue or if 
there shall be but one such daughter then to the use of such one 
or only daughter in tail and in default of such issue then to the 
use of my third son John during the term of his natural life 
without impeachment of waste and from and after his decease 
then to the use of my grandson John the first son of my said son 
John during the term of his natural life without impeachment 
of waste and after the decease of my said grandson John td the 
use of the first and every other son of my said grandson John 
severally and successively according to their respective seniority 
i in tail and for default of such issue to the use of all and every 
i the daughters and daughter of my said grandson John as ten¬ 
ants in common in tail with cross remainders between or among 
them in tail and if all the daughters of my said grandson John, 
except one shall die without issue, or if there shall be but one 
such daughter' [This, you will see, is my little Mary ] ‘ then to the 
use of such one or only daughter in tail and in default of such 
issue then to the use of the second and every other son of my 
said third son John severally and successively according to 
his respective seniority in tail and in default of such issue 
to the use of all and every the daughters and daughter of my 
said third son John as tenants in common in tail with cross 
remainders between or amongst them in tail and in default 
of such issue to the use of my fourth son Paul during the 
term of his natural life without impeachment of waste and 
from and after his decease then to the use of my grandson Paul 


22 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY . 


the son of my said son Paul during his natural life without im- 
peachment of waste and after the decease of my said grandson 
Paul to the use of the first and every other son of my said 
grandson severally and successively according to their respective 
seniority in tail and for default of such issue to the use of all 
and every the daughters and daughter of my said grandson 
Paul as tenants in common in tail with cross remainders be¬ 
tween or amongst them in tail and if all the daughters, of my 
said grandson Paul except one shall die^without issue or if there 
shall be but one such daughter then to the use of such one or 
only daughter in tail and in default of such issue then to the 
use of the second and every other son of my said fourth son 
Paul severally and successively according to his respective 
seniority in tail and in default of such issue to the use of all 
and every the daughters and daughter of my said fourth son 
Paul as tenants in common in tail with cross remainders be¬ 
tween or amongst them in tail,’ etc., etc. 

“P.S.—Then comes what the lawyers call a general devise— 
to trustees to preserve the contingent remainders before devised 
from being destroyed; but what that means perhaps you can 
get somebody to t^ll me. I hope it may be some legal jargon 
to preserve my very contingent remainder, as it appears to 
me.” 

The tone of Edward Arundel's answer to this letter was more 
characteristic of the writer than in harmony with poor John’s 
solemn appeal. 

“ You dear, foolish old Marehmont,” the lad wrote, “ of course 
T shall take care of Miss Mary: and my mother shall adopt her, 
and she shall live at Dangerfield, and be educated with my sis¬ 
ter Letitia, who has the joiliest French governess, and a Ger¬ 
man maid for conversation; and don’t let Paul Marehmont try 
on any of his games with me, that's all! But what do you mean, 
you ridiculous old boy, by talking about dying, and drowning, 
and shipwrecked mariners, and catching at straws, and all that 
sort of humbug, when you know very well, that you’ll live to 
inherit the Lincolnshire property, and that Pm coming to you 
^very year to shoot, and that you’re going to build a tennis-court 
—of course there is a billiard-room—and that you’re going to 
have a stud of hunters and be master of the hounds, and no end* 
of bricks to your ever devoted friend, countryman, and brother, 

“ Edgardo. 

“42 Montague Square, Dec. 81.1883. 

“P. S. By the bye, don’t you think a situation in a lawyer’s 
office would suit you better "than the T, R. D. L.? If you do, I 
could manage it. ” A happy new year to Miss Mary!” 

It was thus that Mr. Edward Arundel accepted the solemn 
trust which his friend confided to him in all simplicity and good 
faith. Mary Marehmont herself was not more innocent in the 
ways of the world outside Oakley Street, the Waterloo Road, 
and the New Cut, than was the little girl’s father; nothing 
seemed more natural to him than to intrust the doubtful future 
of his only child to the bright-faced, handsome boy, whose early 


JOHN MARCH MO NT'S LEGACY. 

boyhood had been unblemished by a mean sentiment or a dis¬ 
honorable action. John Marchmont had spent three years in 
the Berkshire academy, at which Edward and his cousin, Mar¬ 
tin Mostyn, had been educated; and young Arundel, who was 
far behind his kinsman in the comprehension of a problem in 
algebra, had been wise enough to recognize that which Martin 
Mostyn could not understand—a gentleman in a shabby coat. It 
was thus that a friendship had arisen between the teacher of 
mathematics and his handsome pupil; and it was thus that an 
unreasoning belief in Edward Arundel had sprung up in John’s 
simple mind. 

“ If niy little girl were certain of inheriting the fortune,” Mr. 
Marchmont thought, “ I might find many who would be glad to 
accept my trust, and to serve her well and faithfully. But the 
chance is such a remote one. I cannot forget how the Jews 
laughed at me two years ago, when I tried to borrow money 
upon my reversionary interest. No, I must trust this brave- 
hearted bov, for I have no one else to confide in; and who else 
is there who would not ridicule my fear of my cousin Paul?” 

Indeed Mr. Marchmont had some reason to be considerably 
ashamed of his antipathy to the young artist, working for his 
bread, and for the bread of his invalid mother and unmarried 
sister, in that bitter winter of ’38: working patiently and hope¬ 
fully, in despite of all discouragement, and content to live a 
joyless and monotonous life in a dingy lodging near Fitzroy 
Square. I can find no excuse for John Marchmont’s prejudice 
against an industrious and indefatigable young man, who was 
the sole support of two helpless women. Heaven knows, if to be 
adored by two women is any evidence of a man’s virtue. Paul 
must have been the best of men; for Stephanie Marchmont and 
her daughter Clarisse regarded the artist with a reverential 
idolatry that was not without a tinge of romance. I can assign 
no reason, then, for John’s dislike of his cousin. They had 
been school-fellows at a wretched suburban school, where the 
children of poor people were boarded, lodged, and educated all 
the year round for a pitiful stipend of something under twenty 
pounds. One of the special points of the prospectus was the an -1 
nouncement that there were no holidays; for the jovial Christ- 1 
mas gatherings of merry faces, which are so delightful to the [ 
wealthy citizens of Bloomsbury or Tyburnia, take another com¬ 
plexion in poverty-stricken households, whose scantily-stocked 
larders can ill support the raids of raw-boned lads clamorous for 
provender. 

The two boys had met at a school of this caliber, and had 
never met since. They may not have been the best friends, 
perhaps, at the classical academy; but their quarrels were by no 
means desperate. They may have rather freely discussed their 
several chances of the Lincolnshire property; but I have no ro¬ 
mantic story to tell of a stirring scene in the humble school¬ 
room, no exciting record of deadly insult and deep vows of 
vengeance. No inkstand was ever flung by one boy into the 
face of the other; no savage blow from a horse-whip ever cut a 
fatal scar across the brow of either of the cousins. John March* 


24 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


mont would have been almost as puzzled to account for his ob¬ 
jection to his kinsman as was the nameless gentleman vfho so 
naively confessed his dislike of Dr. Fell. I fear that a great 
many of our likings and dislikings are too apt to be upon the 
Dr. Fell principle. Mr. Wilkie Collins’ Basil could not tell why 
he fell madly in love with the lady whom it was his evil fortune 
to meet in an omnibus; nor why he entertained an uncomfort¬ 
able feeling about the gentleman who was to be her destroyer. 
David Copperfield disliked Uriah Heep even before he had any 
substantial reason for objecting to the evil genius of Agnes 
Wickfield's father. The boy disliked the snake-like schemer of 
Canterbury because his eyes were round and red, and his hands 
clammy and unpleasant to the touch. Perhaps John March- 
mont’s reasons for his aversion to bis cousin were about as sub¬ 
stantial as these of Master Copperfield’s. It may be that the 
school-boy disliked his comrade because Paul March moot’s 
handsome gray eyes were a little too near together; because his 
thin and delicately-chiseled lips were a thought too tightly com¬ 
pressed; because his cheeks would fade to an awful corpse-like 
whiteness under circumstances which would have brought the 
rushing life-blood, hot and red, into another boy’s face; because 
he was silent and suppressed when it would have been more 
natural to be loud and clamorous; because he could smile under 
provocations that would have made another frown; because, in 
short, there was that about him which, let it be found where it 
will, always gives birth to suspicion— mystery. 

So the cousins had parted, neither friends nor foes, to tread 
their separate roads in the unknown country, which is apt to 
seem barren and desolate enough to travelers who foot it in 
hob-nailed boots considerably the worse for wear; and as 
the iron hand of poverty held John Marchmont even further 
back than Paul upon the hard road which each had to tread, 
the quiet pride of the teacher of mathematics most effectually 
kept him out of his kinsmau’s way. He had only heard enough 
of Paul to know that he was living in London, and work¬ 
ing hard for a living; working as hard as John himself, perhaps, 
but at least able to keep afloat in a higher social position than 
the law stationer’s hack and the banner holder of Drury Lane. 

But Edward Arundel did not forget his friends in Oakley 
Street. The boy made a morning call upon his father's solicitors, 
Messrs. Paulette, Paulette & Mathewscn, of Lincoln’s Inn 
Fields, and w T as so extremely eloquent in his needy friend’s cause 
as to provoke the good-natured laughter of one of the junior 
partners, who declared that Mr. Edward Arundel ought to wear 
a silk gowm before he was thirty. The result of this interview 
was, that before the first month of the new year was out John 
Marchmont had abandoned the classic banner and the demoniac 
mask to a fortunate successor, and had taken possession of a 
hard-seated, slim-legged stool in one of the offices of Messrs. 
Paulette, Paulette & Mathewson, as copying and outdoor clerk, 
at a salary of thirty shillings a veeek. 

" So little Mary entered now upon a golden age, in which her 
evenings were no longer desolate and lonely, but spent pleas- 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


25 


antly with her father in the study of such learning as was suited 
to her years, or perhaps rather to her capacity, which was far 
beyond her years; and on certain delicious nights, to be remem¬ 
bered ever afterward, John Marchmont took his little girl to the 
gallery of one or other of the transpontine theaters: and I am 
sorry to say that my heroine—for she is to be my heroine by and 
by —sucked oranges, ate Abernethy biscuits, and cooled her 
delicate nose against the iron railing T of the gallery, after the 
manner of the masses when they enjoy the British Drama. 

But all this time John Marchmont was utterly ignorant of one 
rather important fact in the history of those three lives which 
he was apt to speak of as standing between him and Marchmont 
Towers. Young Arthur Marchmont, the immediate heir of the 
estate, had been shot to death upon the 1st of September, 1838, 
without blame to any one or anything but his own carelessness, 
which had induced him to scramble through a hedge with a 
superb fowling-piece, the costly present of a doting father, 
loaded aud on full cock. This melancholy event, w hich had been 
briefly recorded in all the newspapers, had never reached the 
knowledge of poor John Marchmont, who had no friends to busy 
themselves about his interests, or to rush eagerly to carry him 
any intelligence affecting his prosperity. Nor had he read the 
obituary notice respecting Marmaduke Marchmont. the bachelor, 
who had breathed his last stertorous breath in a fit of apoplexy 
exactly one twelvemonth before the day upon which Edward 
Arundel had breakfasted in Oakley Street. 


CHAPTER TV. 

GOING AWAY. 

Edward Arundel went from Montague Square straight into 
the household of the private tutor of whom he had spoken, 
there to complete his education, and to be prepared for the 
onerous duties of a military life. From the household of his 
private tutor he w r ent at once into a cavalry regiment, after 
sundry examinations, which were not nearly so stringent in the 
year one thousand eight hundred and forty as they have since 
become. Indeed, I think the unfortunate young cadets who are 
educated upon the high-pressure system, and who are expected 
to give a synopsis of Portuguese political intrigue duriDg the 
eighteenth century, a scientific account of the currents of the Red 
Sea, and a critical disquisition upon the comedies of Aristophanes 
as compared with those of Pedro Calderon de la Barca—not for¬ 
getting to glance at the effect of different ages and nationalities 
upon the respective minds of the two playwrights, within a gr & 
period of, say half an hour—would have envied Mr. Arundel *or 
the easy manner in which he obtained his commission in a dis¬ 
tinguished cavalry regiment. Mr. Edward Arundel therefore 
inaugurated the commencement of the year 1840 by plunging 
very deeply into the books of a crack military tailor in New Bur¬ 
lington Street, and by a visit to Dangerfleld Park, where he 
went to make his adieus before sailing for India, whither his 
regiment had just been ordered. 



JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


I do not doubt that Mrs. Arundel was very sorrowful at this 
sudden parting with her yellow-haired younger son. The boy 
and his mother walked together in the winterv sunset under the 
leafless beeches at Dangerfield, and talked of the dreary voyage 
that lay before the lad: the arid plains and cruel jungles far 
away; perils by sea and perils by land; but across them all, 
Fame waved her white arms, beckoning to the young soldier, 
and crying, “Come, conqueror that shall be! come, through 
trial and danger, through fever and famine—come to your rest 
upon my blood-stained lap!” Surely this boy, being only just 
eighteen years of age, may be forgiven if he is a little romantic, 
a little over-eager and impressionable, a little too confident that 
the next thing to going out to India as a sea sick subaltern in a 
great transport-ship is coming home with the reputation of a 
Clive. Perhaps he may be forgiven, too, if, in his fresh enthu¬ 
siasm, he sometimes forgot the shabby friend whom he had 
helped little better than a twelvemonth before, and the earnest 
hazel eyes that had shone upon him in the pitiful Oakley Street 
chamber. I do not say that he was utterly unmindful of his 
old teacher of mathematics. It was not in his nature to forget 
any one who had need of his services; for this boy. so eager to 
be a soldier, was of the chivalrous temperament, and would 
have gone out to die for his mistress, or his friend, if need had 
been. He had received two or three grateful letters from John 
Marchmont, in each of which the lawyer’s clerk spoke pleas¬ 
antly of his new life, and hopefully of his health, which had 
improved considerably, he said, since his resignation of the 
tragic banner and the pantomimic mask. Neither had Edward 
quite forgotten his promise of enlisting Mrs. Arundel’s sym¬ 
pathies in aid of the motherless little girl. In one of these 
wmtery walks beneath the black branches at Dangerfield the lad 
had told the sorrowful story of his well-born tutor’s poverty and 
humiliation. 

“Only think, mother!” he cried, at the end of the little his¬ 
tory. “ 1 saw the poor fellow carrying a great calico flag, and 
marching about at the heel of a procession, to be laughed at by 
the costermongers in the gallery; and I know that he is de¬ 
scended from a capital Lincolnshire family, and will come in 
I for no end of money if be only lives long enough. But if he 
should die, mother, and leave his little girl destitute, you’ll look 
after her, won’t you ?” 

I don’t know whether Mrs. Arundel quite entered into her 
son’s ideas upon the subject of adopting Mary Marchmont, or 
whether she had any definite notion of bringing the little girl 
home to Dangerfield for the natural term of her life, in the 
event of the child being left an orphan. But she was a kind 
and charitable lady, and she scarcely cared to damp her boy’s 
spirits by holding forth upon the doubtful wisdom of his adopt¬ 
ing, or promising to adopt, any stray orphans who might cross 
his pathway. 

“ I hope the little girl may not lose her father. Edward,” she 
said, gently. “Besides, dear, you say that Mr. Marchmont tells 
you he has humble friends, who would take the child if any- 


John ma’rchmont's legacy. 27 

thing happened to him. He does not wish us to adopt the little 
girl; he only asks us to interest ourselves in her fate.” 

“And you will do that, mother darling?” cried the boy. 
“You will take an interest in her, won’t you? You couldn’t 
help doing so if you were to see her. She’s not like a child, you 
know—not a bit like Letitia. She is as grave and quiet as you 
are, mother—or graver, I think; and she looks quite a lady, in 
spite of her poor, shabby pinafore and frock.” 

“ Does she wear shabby frocks ?” said the mother. “ I could 
help her in that matter, at all events, Ned. I might send her a 
great trunk full of Letitia’s things. She outgrows them long 
before they are shabby.” 

The boy colored and shook his head. 

“ It’s very kind of you to think of it, mother dear; but I don’t 
think that would quite answer,” he said. 

“Why not?” 

“Because, you see, John Marchmont is a gentleman; and, 
you know, though he’s so dreadfully poor now, he is heir to 
Marchmont Towers. And though he didn’t mind doing any¬ 
thing in the world to earn a few shillings a week, he mightn’t 
like to take cast-off clothes.” 

So nothing more was to be said or done upon the subject. 

Edward Arundel wrote his humble friend a pleasant letter, in 
which he told John that he had enlisted his mother's sympathy 
in Mary’s cause, and in which bespoke in very glowing terms of 
the Indian expedition that lay before him. 

“I wish I could come to say good-bye to you and Miss Mary 
before I go,” he wrote; “but that’s impossible. I go straight 
from here to Southampton by coach at the end of this month, 
and the Auckland sails on the 2d of February. Tell Miss Mary I 
shall bring her home all kinds of pretty presents from Afghan¬ 
istan—ivory fans, and Cashmere shawls, and Chinese puzzles, 
and embroidered slippers with turned-up toes, and diamonds, 
and attar of roses, and such like; and remember that I expect 
you to write to me. and to give me the earliest news of your com¬ 
ing into the Lincolnshire property.” 

John Marchmont received this letter in the middle of Janu¬ 
ary. He gave a despondent sigh as he refolded the boyish epistle 
after reading it to his little girl. 

“We haven’t so many friends, Polly,” he said, “that we 
should be indifferent to the loss of this one.” 

Mary Marchmont’s cheek grew paler at her father’s sorrowful 
speech. That imaginative temperament, which was, as I have 
said, almost morbid in its intensity, presented every object 
to the little girl in a light in which things are looked, at by 
very few children. Only these few words, and her fancy 
roamed far away to that cruel land whose perils her father had 
described to her, Only these few words, and she was away in 
the rocky Bolao Pass/under hurricanes of drifting snow; she 
saw the hungry soldiers fighting with savage dogs for the pos¬ 
session of foul carrion. She had heard all the perils and diffi 
culties which had befallen the Army of the Indus, in the year 
'M, and the womanly heart sank under those cruel memories. 


28 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY . 


“ He will go to India and be killed, papa dear,” she said. 
«* Oh, why, why do they let him go? His mother can’t love 
him, can she? "She would never let him go if she did.” 

John Marchmont was obliged to explain to his daughter that 
motherly love must not go so far as to deprive a r of its 
defenders; and that the richest jewels which Cornelia ,an give 
to her country are those ruby life-drops which flow from the 
hearts of her "bravest and brightest sons. Mary was a poor po¬ 
litical economist; she could not reason upon the necessity of 
chastising Persian insolence, or checking Russian encroach¬ 
ments upon the far away shores of the Indus. Was Edward 
Arundel’s bright head, with its aureole of yellow hair, to be 
cloven asunder by an Afghan renegade’s saber, because the 
young Shah of Persia had been contumacious? 

Mary Marchmont wept silently that day over a three-volume 
novel, while her father was away serving writs upon wretched 
insolvents, in his capacity of outdoor clerk to Messrs. Paulette, 
Paulette & Mathewson. 

The young lady no longer spent her quiet days in the two- 
pair back. Mr. Marchmont and his daughter had remained 
faithful to Oakley Street, and the proprietress of the ladies’ 
wardrobe, who w r as a good, motherly creature; but they had 
descended to the grandeur of the first floor, wfliose gorgeous 
decorations Marv had glanced at furtively in the days gone by, 
when the splendid chambers were occupied by an elderly and 
reprobate commission-agent, who seemed utterly indifferent to 
the delights of a convex mirror supported by a gilded but crip¬ 
pled eagle, whose dignity was somewhat impaired by the loss of 
a wing; but which bijou appeared to Marv to be a fitting adorn¬ 
ment for the young queen's palace in St. "James’ park. 

But neither the eagle nor the third volume of a thrilling ro¬ 
mance could comfort Mary upon this bleak January day. She 
shut her book, and stood by the window, looking out into the 
dreary street, that seemed so blotted and dim under the falling 
snow. 

“it snowed in the Pass of Bolan,” she thought; “and the 
treacherous Indians harassed the brave soldiers, and killed their 
camels. What will become of him in that dreadful country ? 
Shall we ever see him again ?” ^ 

Yes, Mary, to your sorrow. Indian cimeters will let him go 
scatheless; famine and fever will pass him by; but the hand whicli 
points to that far-away day on which you and he are to meet 
will never fail or falter in its purpose until that day comes. 

* * * * * * * 

We have no need to dwell upon the preparations which were 
made for the young soldier’s departure from home, nor of the 
tender farewells between the mother and her son. 

Mr. Arundel was a country gentleman pur et simple , a hearty, 
broad-shouldered squire, who had no thought above his farm 
and his dog-kennel, or the hunting of the red deer, with which 
his neighborhood abounded. He sent his younger son to India 
as coolly as he had sent the elder to Oxford. The boy had little 
to inherit} and must be provided for in a gentlemanly manner, 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


n 


Other younger sons of the house of Arundel had fought and 
conquered in the Honorable East India Company’s service; and 
was Edward any better than them, that there should be senti¬ 
mental whining because the lad was going away to fight his 
way to fortune, if he could? He even went further than this, 
and dc^orcrf that Master Edward was a lucky dog to be going 
out at sach a time, when there was plenty of fighting, and a 
very fair chance of speedy promotion for a good soldier. 

He gaee the young cadet his blessing, reminded him of the 
limit of such supplies as he was to expect from home, bade him 
keep clear of the brandy-bottle and the dice-box; and, having 
done this, believed that he had performed his duty as an En¬ 
glishman and a father. 

If Mrs. Arundel wept she wept in secret, loath to discourage 
her son by the sight of those natural, womanly tears. If Miss 
Letitia Arundel was sorry to lose her brother she mourned with 
most praiseworthy discretion, and did not forget to remind the 
young traveler that she expected to receive a muslin frock em¬ 
broidered with beetle wings by an early mail. And as Algernon 
Fairfax Dangerfield Arundel, the heir, was away at college, 
there was no one else to mourn. So Edward left the house of 
his forefathers by a branch coach, which started from the Arun¬ 
del Arms in time to meet the Telegraph at Exeter; and no noisy 
lamentations shook the sky above Dangerfield Park, no mourn¬ 
ing voices echoed through the spacious rooms. The old servants 
were sorry to lose the younger-born, whose easy, genial temper¬ 
ament had made him an especial favorite; but there was a certain 
admixture of joviality with their sorrow, as there generally is 
with all mourning in the basement; and the strong ale, the 
famous Dangerfield October, went faster upon that 31st of Jan¬ 
uary than on any day since Christmas. 

I doubt if any one at Dangerfield Park sorrowed as bitterly 
for the departure of the boyish soldier as a romantic young lady 
of nine years old, in Oakley Street, Lambeth, whose one senti¬ 
mental day-dream, half childish, half womanly, owned Edward 
Arundel as its center figure. 

So the curtain falls on the picture of a brave ship sailing east 
ward, her white canvas strained against the cold February sky, 
and a little girl weeping over the tattered pages of a stupid 
novel in a shabby London lodging. 

CHAPTER V. 

MARCHMQNT TOWERS. 

There is a lapse of three years and a half between the acts; 
and the curtain rises to reveal a widely-different picture: the 
picture of a noble mansion in the flat Lincolnshire country; a 
stately pile of building, standing proudly forth against a back¬ 
ground of black woodland; a noble building, supported upon 
either side by an octagon tower, whose solid masonry is half 
hidden by the ivy which clings about the stonework, trailing 
here and there, and flapping restlessly with every breath of 
wind against the narrow casements. 


80 JOHN MAltCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

A broad stone terrace stretches the entire length of the grim 
facade, from tower to tower; and three flights of steps lead 
from the terrace to the broad lawn, which loses itself in a vast 
grassy flat, only broken by a few clumps of trees and a dismal 
pool of black water, but called by courtesy a park. Grim stone 
griffins surmount the terrace steps, and griffins’ heads and other 
architectural monstrosities, worn and moss-grown, keep watch 
and ward over every door and window, every archway and 
abutment, frowning threat and defiance upon the daring visi¬ 
tor who approaches the great house by this, the formidable 
chief entrance. 

The mansion looks westward; but there is another approach, 
a low archway on the southern side, which leads into a quad¬ 
rangle, where there is a quaint little door under a stone portico, 
ivy covered like the rest—a comfortable little door of massive 
oak, studded with knobs of rusty iron—a door generally affected 
by visitors familiar with the house. 

This is Marchmont Towers—a grand and stately mansion, 
which bad been a monastery in the days when England and the. 
Pope were friends and allies; and which had been bestowed 
upon Hugh Marchmont, gentleman, by his Sovereign Lord and 
most Christian Majesty the King, Henry VIII., of blessed 
memory, and by that gentleman commoner extended and im¬ 
proved at considerable outlay. This is Marchmont Towers—a 
splended and a princely habitation truly; but perhaps scarcely 
the kind of dwelling one would choose, out of every other rest-, 
ing-place upon earth, for the holy resting-place we call home. 
The great mansion is a little too dismal in its lonely grandeur; 
it lacks shelter when the dreary winds come sweeping across the 
grassy flats in the bleak winter weather; it lacks shade when 
the western sun blazes on every window-pane in the stifling 
sum tner evening. It is at all times rather too stony in its aspect, 
and is apt to remind one, almost painfully, of every weird and 
sorrowful story treasured in the storehouse of memory. 
Ancient tales of enchantment, dark German legends, wild 
Scottish fancies, grim fragments of half-forgotten demonology, 
strange stories of murder, violence, mystery, and wrong, 
vaguely intermingle in the stranger’s mind as lie looks, for the 
first time, at Marchmont Towers. 

But of course these feelings wear off in time. So invincible 
is the power of custom, that we might make ourselves comfort¬ 
able in the Castle of Otranto after a reasonable sojourn within 
its mysterious walls. Familiarity would breed contempt for 
the giant helmet, and all the other grim apparitions of the 
haunted dwelling. The commonplace and ignoble wants of 
every-dav life must surely bring disenchantment with them. 
The ghost and the butcher’s boy cannot well exist contempo¬ 
raneously; and the avenging shade can^scarcely continue to lurk 
beneath the portal which is visited by the matutinal milkman. 
Indeed, this is doubtless the reason that the most restless and 
impatient spirit, bent on early vengeance and immediate retri¬ 
bution, will yet wait till the shades of night have fallen before 


JOHN MAttCHMONT'S LEGACY. Si 

he reveals himself, rather than run the risk of an ignominious 
encounter with the postman or the parlor-maid. 

Be it how it might, the phantoms of March moot Towers were 
not intrusive. They may have perambulated the long tapes¬ 
tried corridors, the tenantless chambers, the broad black stair¬ 
case of shining oak; all the dead and gone beauties, and 
soldiers, and lawyers, and parsons, and simple country squires 
of the Marchmont race, may have descended from their picture- 
frames to hold a witches’ Sabbath in the old house; but as the 
Lincolnshire servants were hearty eaters and heavy sleepers, the 
ghosts had it all to themselves. I believe there was one dismal 
story attached to the house—the story of a Marchmont of the 
time of Charles I., who bad murdered his coachman in a fit of 
insensate rage; and it was even asserted, upon the authority of 
an old housekeeper, that John Marchmont’s grandmother, when 
a young woman and lately come as a bride to the Towers, had 
beheld the murdered coachman stalk into her chamber, ghastly 
and blood-bedabbled, in the dim summer twilight. But as this 
story was not particularly romantic, and possessed none of the 
elements likely to insure popularity, such as love, jealousy, re¬ 
venge, mystery, youth, and beauty, it had never been very 
widely disseminated. 

I should think that the new owner of Marchmont Towers— 
new within the last six months—was about the last person in 
Christendom to be hypercritical, or to raise fanciful objections 
to his dwelling; for inasmuch as he had come straight from a 
wretched transpontine lodging to this splendid Lincolnshire 
mansion, and had at the same time exchanged a stipend of 
thirty shillings a week for an income of eleven thousand a year, 
derivable from lands that spread, far away over fenny flats and 
low-lying farms, to the solitary sea-shore, he had ample reason 
to be grateful to Providence, and well pleased with his new 
abode. 

Yes; Philip Marchmont, the childless widower, had died six 
months before, at the close of the year ’43, of a broken heart, his 
old servants said—broken by the loss of his only and idolized 
son; after which loss he had never been known to smile. He 
was one of those undemonstrative men, who can take a great 
sorrow quietly, and only—die of it. Philip Marchmont lay in a 
velvet-covered coffin, above his son’s, in the stone recess set 
apart for them in the Marchmont vault beneath Kemberling 
Church, three miles from the Towers; and John reigned in his 
stead. John Marchmont, the supernumerary, the banner-holder 
of Drury Lane, the patient, conscientious copying and outdoor 
clerk of Lincoln’s Inn, was now sole owner of the Lincolnshire 
estate, sole master of a household of well-trained old servants, 
sole proprietor of a very decent country gentleman’s stud, and 
of chariots, barouches, chaises, phaetons, and other vehicles— 
a little old-fashioned and out of date, it may be, but very com¬ 
fortable to a man for whom an omnibus ride had long been a 
treat and a rarity. Nothing had been touched or disturbed since 
Philip Marchmont’s death. The rooms he had used were still the 
occupied apartments; the chambers he had chosen to shut up 


82 


JOHN MAncmiONT'S LEGACY. 

were still kept with locked doors; the servants who had served 
him waited upon his successor, whom they declared to be a 
quiet, easy gentleman, far too wise to interfere with old serv- 
ants, every one of whom knew the ways of the house a great 
deal better than he did, though he was the master of it. 

There was, therefore, no shadow of change in the stately man¬ 
sion. The dinner-bell still rang at the same hour; the same 
trades people left the same species of wares at the low oaken 
door; the old housekeeper, arranging her simple menu, planned 
her narrow round of soups and roasts, sweets and made-dishes, 
exactly as she had been wont to do, and had no new tastes to 
consult. A grav-haired bachelor, who had been own man to 
Philip, was now own man to John. The carriage which had 
conveyed the late lord every Sunday to morning and afternoon 
Service at Kemberling conveyed the new lord, who sat in the 
same seat that his predecessor had occupied in the great family- 
pew, and read his prayers out of the same book—a noble, crim¬ 
son morocco-covered volume, in which George, our most gra¬ 
cious king and governor, and all manner of dead and gone 
princes and princesses were prayed for. 

The presence of Mary Marchmont made the only change in 
the old house; and even that change was a very trifling one. 
Mary and her father were as closely united at Marchmont Tow¬ 
ers as they had been in Oakley Street. The little girl clung to 
her father as tenderly as ever—more tenderly than ever, per¬ 
haps; for she knew something of that which the physicians had 
said, and she knew that John Marchmont’s lease of life was not 
a long one. Perhaps it would be better to say that he had no 
lease at all. His soul was a tenant- on sufferance in its frail 
earthly habitation, receiving a respite now and again, when the 
flicker of the lamp was very low, every chance breath of wind 
threatening to extinguish it forever. It was only those who 
knew John Marchmont very intimately who were fully ac¬ 
quainted with the extent of his danger. He no longer bore any 
of those fatal outward signs of consumption, which fatigue and 
deprivation had once made painfully conspicuous. 

The hectic flush and the unnatural brightness of the eyes had 
subsided; indeed, John seemed much stronger and heartier than 
of old; and it is only great medical practitioners who can tell to 
a nicety what is going on inside a man, when he presents a very 
fair exterior to the unprofessional eye. But John was decidedly 
better than he had been. He might live three years, five, seven, 
possibly even ten years; but he must live the life of a man who 
holds himself perpetually upon his defense against death; and 
he must recognize in every bleak current of wind, in every 
chilling damp, or perilous heat, or over-exertion, or ill-chosen 
morsel of food, or hasty emotion, or sudden passion, an insidi¬ 
ous attack upon the part of his dismal enemy. 

Mary Marchmont knew all this—or divined it, perhaps, rather 
than knew it, with the child-woman's subtle power of divina¬ 
tion, which is even stronger *than the actual woman’s; £&r her 
father had done his best to keep all sorrowful knowledge from 
her. She knew that he was in clanger; and she loved him all the 


JOHN MARCHMONHS LEGACY. 33 

more dearly, as the one precious thing which was in constant 
peril of being snatched away. The child’s love for her father 
has not grown any less morbid in its intensity since Edward 
Arundel’s departure for Iudia; nor has Mary become more child¬ 
like since her coming to Marchmont Towers, and her abandon¬ 
ment of all those sordid cares, those pitiful every-day duties, 
which had made her womanly. 

It may be that the last lingering glamour of childhood had 
forever faded away with the realization of the day-dream which 
she had carried about with her so often in the dingy transpon¬ 
tine thoroughfares around Oakley Street. Marchmont Towers, 
that fairy palace, whose lighted windows had shone upon her 
far away across a cruel forest of poverty and trouble, like the 
enchanted castle which appears to the lost wanderer of a child’s 
story* was now the home of the father she loved. The grim 
enchanter, Death, the only magician of our modern histories, 
had waved his skeleton hand, more powerful than the star- 
gemmed wand of any fairy godmother, and the obstacles which 
had stood between John Marchmont and his inheritance had 
one by one been swept away. 

But was Marchmont Towers quite as beautiful as that fairy 
palace of Mary’s day-dream? No, not quite; not quite. The 
rooms were handsome—handsomer and larger, even, than the 
rooms she had dreamed of; but perhaps none the better for that. 
The.y were grand and gloomy and magnificent: but they were 
not the sunlit chambers which her fancy had built up, and dec¬ 
orated with such shreds and patches of splendor as her narrow 
experience enabled her to devise. Perhaps it was rather a dis¬ 
appointment to Miss Marchmont to discover that the mansion 
was completely furnished, and that there was no room for any 
of those splendors which she had so often contemplated in the 
New Cut. The parrot at the green-grocer’s was a vulgar bird, 
and not by any means admirable in Lincolnshire. The carrying 
away and providing for her favorite trades-people was not prac¬ 
ticable; and John Marchmont had demurred to her proposal of 
adopting the butcher’s daughter. 

There is always something to be given up when our brightest 
visions are realized; there is always some one figure, a low one, 
perhaps, missing in the fullest sum of earthly happiness. I 
dare say, if Alnascbar had married the vizier’s daughter, he 
would have found her a shrew, and would have looked back 
yearningly to the humble days in which he had been an itinerant 
vender of crockery-ware. 

If, therefore, Mary Marchmont found her sunlit fancies not 
quite realized by the great stony mansion that frowned upon 
the fenny country-side, the wide grassy flat, the black pool, with 
its dismal shelter of weird pollard-willows, whose ugly shadows, 
distorted on the bosom of the quiet water, looked like the 
shadows of humpbacked men—if these things did not compose 
as beautiful a picture as that which the little girl had carried so 
long in her mind, she had no more reason to be sorry than the 
rest of us, and had been no more foolish than other dreamers. 
I think she had built her airy castle too much after the model 


34 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


of a last scene in a pantomime, and that she expected to find 
spangled waters twinkling in perpetual sunshine, revolving 
fountains, ever-expanding sunflowers, and gilded clouds of rose- 
colored gauze—everything except the fairies, in short, at March- 
mont Towers Well, the dream was over, and she was quite a 
woman now; a woman, very grateful to Providence when she 
remembered that her father had no longer need to toil for his 
daily bread, and that he was luxuriously lodged, and could 
have the first physicians in the land at his beck and call. 

“ Oh, papa, it is so nice to be rich!” the young lady would ex¬ 
claim now and then, in a fleeting transport of enthusiasm. 

“ How good we ought to be to the poor people, when we remem¬ 
ber how poor we once were!” 

And the little girl did not forget to be good to the poor about 
Kemberling and March mont Towers. There were plenty of poor, 
of course; free and easy pensioners, who came to the Towers for 
brandy, and wine, and milk, and woolen stuffs, and grocery, 
precisely as they would have gone to a shop, except that there 
was to be no bill. The housekeeper doled out her bounties with 
many short homilies upon the depravity and ingratitude of the 
recipients, and gave tracts of an awful and denunciatory nature 
to the pitiful petitioners. Tracts interrogatory, and tracts 
fiercely imperative; tracts that asked: Where are you going? 
Why are you wicked ? Will you repent ? What will become of 
you? and other tracts which cried, Stop, and think! Pause , 
while there is time! Sinner, consider! Evil-doer, beware! 
Perhaps it may not be the wisest possible plan to begin the 
work of reformation by frightening, threatening, and other¬ 
wise disheartening the wretched sinner to be reformed. There 
is a certain sermon in the New Testament containing sacred and 
comforting words, which were spoken upon a mountain near at 
hand to Jerusalem, and spoken to an auditory among which 
there must have been many sinful creatures; but there is more 
of blessing than cursing in that sublime discourse, and it might 
be rather a tender father pleading gently with his wayward 
children than an offended Deity dealing out denunciation upon 
a stubborn and refractory race. But the authors of the tracts may 
have never read this sermon, perhaps; and they may take their 
ideas of composition from that comforting service which we read 
on Ash Wednesday, cowering in fear, and trembling in our 
pews, and calling down curses upon ourselves and our neigh¬ 
bors. Be it as it might, the tracts were not popular among the 
pensioners of Marchmont Towers. They infinitely preferred to 
hear Mary read a chapter in the New Testament, or some pretty 
patriarchal story of primitive obedience and faith. The little 
girl would discourse upon the Scripture histories in her simple, 
old-fashioned manner; and many a stout Lincolnshire farm- 
laborer was content to sit over his hearth, with a pipe of shag- 
tobacco ana a mug of fettled beer, while Miss Marchmont read 
and expounded the history of Abraham and Isaac, or Joseph 
and his brethren, 

“ It’s joost loike a story-book to hear her,” the man would say 
to his wife; “and yet she brings it all boame, too, loike, If she 


JOHN MABOHMONT *S LEGACY, 


81 

leads about Abraham, she’ll say, maybe, ‘ That’s joost how you 
gave your only sou to be a soldier, you know. Muster Mooggms ’ 
—she alius says Muster Mooggins-—* you gave un into God’s 
hands, and you troosted God would take care of un; and what¬ 
ever cam’ to un would be the best, even if it was death,’ That’s 
what she’ll say, bless her little heart! so gentle and tender loike. 
The worst o’ chaps coujdn’t but listen to her.” 

Mary Marchmont’s morbidly sensitive nature adapted her to 
all charitable offices. No chance word in her simple talk ever 
inflicted a wound upon the listener. She had a subtle and in¬ 
tuitive comprehension of other people’s feelings, derived from 
the extreme susceptibility of her own. She had never been vul¬ 
garized by the associations of poverty; for her self-contained 
nature took no color from the things that surrounded her, and 
she was only at Marchmont Towers that which she had been 
from the age of six—a little lady, grave and gentle, dignified, 
discreet, and wise. 

There was one bright figure missing out of the picture which 
she had been wont of late years to make of the Lincolnshire 
mansion, and that was the figure of the yellow-haired boy who 
had breakfasted upon haddocks and hot rolls in Oakley Street. 
She had imagined Edward Arundel an inhabitant of that fair 
Utopia. He would live with them; or, if he could not live with 
them,{he would be with them as a visitor—often—almost always. 
He would leave off being a soldier, for, of course, her papa 
could give him more money than he could get by being a soldier 
—(you see that Mary’s experience of poverty had taught her to 
take a mercantile and sordid view of military life)—and he 
would come to Marchmont Towers, and ride, and drive, and 
play tennis—what was tennis? she wondered—and read three- 
volume novels all day long. But that part of the dream was at 
least broken. 

Marchmont Towers was Mary’s home, but the young soldier 
was far away; in the Pass of Bolan, perhaps—Mary had a pict¬ 
ure of that cruel rocky pass almost always in her mind—or 
cutting his way through a black jungle, with the yellow eyes 
of hungry tigers glaring out at him through the loathsome 
tropical foliage: or dying of thirst and fever under a scorching 
sun, with no better pillow than the neck of a dead camel, with 
no more tender watcher than the impatient vulture flapping her 
wings above his head, and waiting till he too should be carrion. 
What was the good of wealth, if it could not bring this young 
soldier home to a safe shelter in his native land ? John March¬ 
mont smiled when his daughter asked this question, and im¬ 
plored her father to write to Edward Arundel, recalling him to 
England. 

“God knows how glad I should be to have the boy here, 
Polly,” John said, as he drew his little girl closer to his breast— 
she sat on his knee still, though she was thirteen years of age— 
••but Edward has a career before him, my dear, and could not 
give it up for an inglorious life in this rambling old house. It 
isn’t as if I could hold out any inducement to him, you know, 


36 JOHN MA RCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

Polly. I can’t; for I mustn’t leave any money away from my 
little girl.” 

“ But he might have half my money, papa, or all of it,” Mary 
added, piteously. What could I do with money if——” 

She didmt finish the sentence; she never could complete any 
Such sentence as this; but her father knew what she meant. 

So six months had passed since a dreary January day upon 
which John Marchmont had read in the second column of the 
Times that he could hear of something greatly to his advantage 
by applying to a certain solicitor, whose offices were next door 
but one to those of Messrs. Paulette, Paulette & Mathewson. 
His heart began to beat very violently when he read that adver¬ 
tisement in the supplement which it was one of his duties to air 
before the fire in the clerks’ office; but he showed no other sign 
of emotion. He waited until he took the papers to his employer; 
and as he laid them at Mr. Mathewson’s elbow murmured a re¬ 
spectful request to be allowed to go out for half an hour upon 
his own business. 

“Good gracious me, Marchmont!” cried the lawyer; “what 
can you want to go out for at this time in the morning ? You’ve 
only just come, and there’s that agreement between Higgs and 

Sandy man must be copied before-” 

“ Yes, I know, sir; I’ll be back in time to attend to it; but I— 

I think I’ve come into a fortune, sir; and I should like to go and 
see about it.” 

The solicitor turned in his revolving library chair and looked 
aghast at his clerk. Had this Marchmont—always rather un¬ 
naturally reserved and eccentric—gone suddenly mad ? No; the 
copying-clerk stood by his side, grave, self-possessed as ever, 
with his forefinger upon the advertisement. 

“ Marchmont—John—call —Messrs. Tindall & Trollam,” gasped 
Mr. Mathewson. “ Do you mean to tell me it’s you f’ 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ Egad, I’ll go with you!” cried the solicitor, hooking bis arm 
through d;hat of his clerk, snatching his hat from an adjacent 
stand, and dashing through the outer office, down the great 
staircase, and into the next door but one, before John March¬ 
mont knew where he was. 

John had not deceived his employer. Marchmont Towers was 
his, with all its appurtenances. Messrs. Paulette, Paulette & 
Mathewson took him in hand, much to the chagrin of Messrs. 
Tindal & Trollam, and proved his identity in less than a week. 
On a shelf above the high wooden desk at which John had sat, 
copying law-papers, with a weary hand and an aching spine, ap¬ 
peared two brand-nevy deed-boxes, inscribed, in white letters, 
with the name and address of John Marchmont, Esq., Marchmont 
Towers. The copying-clerk’s sudden accession to fortune was 
the talk of all the employes in “ the Fields.” Marchmont 
Towers was exaggerated into all Lincolnshire and a tidy slice of 
Yorkshire. Eleven thousand a year was expanded into an an¬ 
nual million. Everybody expected largesse from the legatee. 
How fond people had been of the quiet clerk, and how magnani¬ 
mously they had concealed their sentiments during his poverty, 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


37 


lest they should wound him, as they urged, “ which ” thev 
knew he was sensitive; and how expansively they now dilated 
on their long-suppressed emotions! Of course, under these cir¬ 
cumstances, it is hardly likely that everybody could be satisfied; 
so it is a small thing to say that the dinner which John gave—by 
his late employers’ suggestion (he was about the last man to 
think of giving a dinner)—at the Albion Tavern, to the legal 
staff of Messrs. Paulette, Paulette & Mathewsou, and such ac¬ 
quaintance of the legal profession as they should choose to invite, 
was a failure; and that gentlemen who’were pretty well used to 
dine upon liver and bacon, or beefsteak and onions, or the 
joint, vegetables, bread, cheese, and celery for a shilling, turned 
up their noses at the turbot, murmured at the paucity of green fat 
in the soup, made light of red mullet and ortolans, objected to 
the flavor of the truffles, and were contemptuous about the 
wines. 

John knew nothing of this. He had lived a separate and se¬ 
cluded existence; and his only thought now was of getting 
away to Marchmont Towers, which had been familiar to him in 
his boyhood, -when he had been wont to go there on occasional 
visits to his grandfather. He wanted to get away from the 
turmoil and confusion of the big, heartless city, in which he 
had endured so much; he wanted to carry away his little girl to 
a quiet country home, and live and die therein peace. He liber¬ 
ally rewarded all the good people about Oakley Street who bad 
been kind to little Mary, and there was weeping and regret in 
the region of the Ladies’ Wardrobe when Mr. Marchmont and 
his daughter went away one bitter winter’s morning in a cab 
which was to carry tLem to the hostelry whence the coach 
started for Lincoln. 

It is strange to think how far those Oakley Street days of pri¬ 
vation and endurance seem to have receded in the memories of 
both father and daughter. The impalpable past fades away and 
it is difficult for John and his little girl to believe that they were 
once so poor and desolate. It is Oakley Street now that is vis¬ 
ionary and unreal. The stately county families bear down upon 
Marchmont Towers in great lumbering chariots, with brazen 
crests upon the hammer-cloths, and sulky coachmen in Crown- 
i George wigs. The county mammas patronize and caress Miss 
Marchmont—what a match she will be for one of. the county 
6ons bv and by!—the county daughters discourse with Mary 
about her poor, and her fancy-work, and her piano, She is get¬ 
ting on slowly, enough with her piano, poor little girl, under the 
tuition of the organist of Swampington, who gives lessons to 
that part of the county. And there are solemn dinners now and 
then at Marchmont Towers; dinners at which Miss Mary appears 
when the cloth has been removed, and reflects in silent wonder 
upon the change that has come to her father and herself. 

Can it be true that she has ever lived in Oakley Street? 
whither came no more aristocratic visitors than her Aunt So 
phia, who was the wife of a Berkshire farmer, and always 
brought hogs’-puddings, and butter, and home-made bread, and 
other rustic delicacies to her brother-in-law; or Mrs. Brigsome, 


38 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY . 


the washerwoman, who made a morning call every Monday 
with John Marchmont’s shabby shirts. The shirts were not 
shabby now: and it was no longer Mary’s duty to watch them 
day by day, and manipulate them tenderly when the linen grew 
frayed at the sharp edges of the folds, or the buttonholes gave 
signs of weakness. Corson, Mr. Marchmont's own man, had 
care of the shirts now; and John wore diamond studs and a 
black satin waistcoat when he gave a dinner-party. They were 
not very lively, those Lincolnshire dinner-parties; though the 
dessert was a sight to look upon, in Mary’s eyes. The long, 
shining table, the red and gold and purple and green Indian 
china, the fluffy woolen d’oyleys, the sparkling cut-glass, the 
sticky preserved ginger and guava-jellv, and dried orange rings 
and chips, and all the stereotyped sweetmeats, were very grand 
and beautiful, no doubt; but Mary had seen livelier desserts in 
Oakley Street, though there had been nothing better than a 
brown-paper bag of oranges from the Westminster Road, and a 
bottle of two-and-twopenny Marsala from the licensed victualer’s 
in the Borough, to promote conviviality. 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE YOUNG SOLDIER'S RETURN. 

The rain beats down upon the battlemented roof of March- 
mont Towers this July day as if it had a mind to flood the old 
mansion. The flat waste of grass, and the lonely clumps of 
trees, are almost blotted out by the falling rain. The low gray 
sky shuts out the distance. This part of Lincolnshire— fenny, 
misty, and flat always—seems flatter and mistier than usual 
to day. The rain beats hopelessly upon the leaves in the wood 
behind Marchmont Towers, and splashes into great pools be¬ 
neath the trees, until the ground is almost hidden by the fallen 
water, and the trees seem to be growing out of a black lake. 
The land is lower behind March mont Towers, and elopes down 
gradually to the bank of a dismal river, which straggles through 
the Marchmont property at a snail’s pace, to gain an impetus 
further on, until it hurries into the sea somewhere northward of 
Grimsby. The wood is not held in any great favor by the house¬ 
hold at the Towers; and it has been a pet project of several 
Marchmonts to level and drain it, but a project not very easily 
to be carried out. Marchmont Towers is said to be unhealthy, 
as a dwelling-house, by reason of this wood, from which mias¬ 
mas rise in certain states of the weather, and it is on this ac¬ 
count that the back of the house—the eastern front, at least, as 
it is called, looking to the wood—is very little used. 

Mary Marchmont sits at a window in the western drawing¬ 
room, watching the ceaseless falling of thfe rain upon this dreary 
.summer afternoon. She is little changed since the day upon 
which Edward Arundel saw her in Oakley Street. She is taller, 
of course; but her figure is as slender and childish as ever; it is 
only her face in which the earnestnesaof premature womanhood 
reveals itself, in a grave and sweet serenity very beautiful to 
contemplate. Her soft brown eyes have a pensive shadow iu 



JOHN MARCmiONT'S LEGACY. 


39 


their gentle light; her mouth is even more pensive. It has been 
said of Jane Grey, of Mary Stuart, of Marie Antoinette, Char¬ 
lotte Corday. and other fated women, that in the gayest hours 
of their youth they bore upon some feature or in some expres¬ 
sion the shadow of the end; an impalpable, indescribable 
presage of an awful future, vaguely felt by those who looked 
upon them. 

Is it thus with Mary Marchmont? Has the solemn hand of 
Destiny set that shadowy brand upon the face of this child, that 
even in her prosperity, as in her adversity, she should be so ut¬ 
terly different from all other children ? Is she already marked 
out for some womanly martyrdom; already set apart for more 
than common suffering? 

She sits alone this afternoon, for her father is busy with his 
agent. Wealth does not mean immunity from all care and 
trouble; and Mr. Marchmont has plenty of work to get through, 
in conjunction with his land-steward, a hard-headed Yorkshire? 
man, who lives at Kemberling, and insists on doing his duty 
with pertinacious honesty. 

The large brown eyes looked wistfully out at the dismal waste 
and the falling rain. There was a wretched equestrian making 
his way along the carriage-drive. 

“ Who can come to us on such a day?*’ Mary thought. “ It 
must be Mr. Gormbv, I suppose ”—the agent’s name was Gormby 
— Mr. Gormby never cares about the wet; but then I thought 
he was with, papa. Oh, I hope it isn’t anybody coming to 
call.” 

But Mary forgot all about the struggling equestrian the next 
moment. She had some morsel of fancy-work upon her lap, 
and picked it up and went on with it, setting slow stitches, and 
letting her thoughts wander far away from Marchmont Towers. 
To India, I am afraid, or to that imaginary India which she 
had created for herself out of such images as were to be picked 
up in the “ Arabian Nights.” She was roused suddenly by the 
opening of a door at the further end of the room, and by the 
voice of a servant, who mumbled a name which sounded some¬ 
thing like Mr. Armenger. 

She rose, blushing a little, to do honor to one of her father's 
county acquaintance, as she thought; when a fair-haired gentle¬ 
man dashed in, very much excited and very wet, and made his 
way toward her. 

“ I would come, Miss Marchmont,” he said—“ I would come, 
though the day was so wet; everybody vowed I was mad to 
think of it, and it was as much as my poor brute of a horse 
could do to get over the ten miles of swamp between this and 
my uncle’s house; but I would come. Where’s John ? I want 
to see John. Didn’t I always tell him he’d come into the Lin¬ 
colnshire property ? Didn’t I always say so, now ? You should 
havfe seen Martin Mostyn’s face—he’s got a capital berth in the 
War Office, and he’s such a snob!—when I told him the news! 
It was as long as my arm. But I must see John, dear old fel¬ 
low; I long to congratulate him.” 

Mary stood with her hands clasped, and her breath coming 


40 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 

quickly. The blush had quite faded out, and left her unusually 
pale. But Edward Arundel did not see this. Young gentlemen 
of four-and-twenty are not very attentive to every change of 
expression in little girls of thirteen. 

“ Oh, is it you, Mr. Arundel 1 Is it really you ?” 

She spoke in a low voice, and it was almost difficult to keep 
the rushing tears back while she did so. She had pictured him 
so often in peril, in famine, in sickness, in death, that to see him 
here, well, happy, light-hearted, cordial, handsome, and brave, 
as she had seen him four and a half years before in the two*pair 
back in Oakley Street, was almost" too much for her to bear 
without the relief of tears. But she controlled her emotion as 
bravely as if she had been a woman of twenty. 

“ I am so glad to see you,” she said, quietly; “ and papa will 
be so glad too. It is the only thing we want, now we are rich, 
to have you with us. We have talked of you so often; and I— 
we—have been so unhappy sometimes, thinking that- 

“ That I should be killed, I suppose ?” 

“Yes; or wounded very, very badly. The battles in India 
have been dreadful, have they not?” 

Mr. Arundel smiled at her earnestness. 

“They have not been exactly child’s play,” he said, shaking 
back his auburn hair and smoothing his thick mustache. He 
was a man now, and a very handsome one; something of that 
type which is known in this year of grace as “ swell;” but brave 
and chivalrous withal, and not afflicted with any impediment in 
his speech. “ The men who talk of the Afghans as a chicken- 
hearted set of fellows are rather out of their reckoning. The 
Indians can fight, Miss Mary, and fight like the devil; but we 
can lick ’em.” 

He walked over to the fireplace, where there was a fire burn 
ing upon this chilly wet day, and began to shake himself dry. 
Mary, following him with her eyes, wondered if there was such 
another soldier in all her majesty’s dominions, and how soon he 
would be made general-in-chief of the Army of the Indus. 

“Then you’ve not been wounded at all, Mr. Arundel?” she 
said, after a pause. 

“ Oh, yes, I’ve been w^ounded; and I got a bullet in my shoul¬ 
der from an Afghan musket, and I’m home on sick-leave.” 

This time he saw the expression of her face, and interpreted 
her look of alarm. 

“ But I ? m not ill, you know, Miss Marchmont,” he said, laugh¬ 
ing. “ Our fellows are very glad of a wound when they feel 
homesick. The 8th come home before long, all of ’em; and I’ve 
a twelvemonth’s leave of absence, and we’re pretty sure to be 
ordered out again by the end of that time, as I don’t believe 
there’s much chance of quiet over there.” 

“You will go out again!” 

Edward Arundel smiled at her mournful tone. 

“To be sure, Miss Mary; I have my captaincy to win, you 
know. I’m only a lieutenant as yet.” 

“ It was only a twelvemonth’s reprieve, after all, then,” Mary 
thought. He would go again to suffer, and to be wounded, and 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY, 41 

to die, perhaps. But then, on the other hand, there was a 
twelvemonth’s respite, and her father might in that time pre¬ 
vail upon the young soldier to stay at Marchmont Towers. It 
was such inexpressible happiuess to see him once more, to know 
that he was safe and well, that she could scarcely do otherwise 
than see all things in a sunny light just now. 

She ran to John Marchmout’s study to tell him of the coming 
of this welcome visitor; but she wept upon her fathers shoulder 
before she could explain who it was whose coming had made 
her so glad. Very few friendships had broken tbe monotony 
of her solitary existence; and Edward Arundel was the only 
chivalrous image she had ever known out of her books. 

John Marchmont was scarcely less pleased than his child to 
see the man who had befriended him in his poverty. Never had 
more heartfelt welcome been given than that which greeted 
Edward Arundel at Marchmont Towers. 

“You will stay with us, of course, my dear Arundel,” John 
said; “you will stop for September and the shooting. You 
know you promised you’d make this your shooting-box; and 
we’ll build the tennis-court. Heaven knows there’s room enough 
for it in the great quadrangle, and there’s a billiard-room over 
this, though I am afraid the table is out of order. But we can 
soon set that right, can’t we, Polly?” 

“Yes, yes, papa; out of my pocket-money, if you like.” 

Mary Marchmont said this in all good faith. It was some¬ 
times difficult for her to remember that her father was really 
rich, and had no need of help out of her pocket-money. The 
slender savings in the little purse had often given him some 
luxury that he would not otherwise have had in the time gone 
by. 

“ You got my letter, then?” John said; “ the letter in which 
I told you--” 

“That Marchmont Towers was yours. Yes, my dear old boy. 
That letter was among a packet my agent brought me half an 
hour before I left Calcutta. God hless you, dear old fellow; how 
glad I was to hear of it! I’ve only been in England a fortnight. 
I went straight from Southampton to Dangerfield to see my 
father and mother, stayed there little over ten days, and then 
offended them all by running away. I reached Swampingtou 
yesterday, slept at my uncle Hubert’s, paid my respects to my 
cousin Olivia, who is—well. I’ve told you what she is—and rode 
over here this morning, much to the annoyance of the inhab¬ 
itants of the Rectory. So, you see, I’ve been doing nothing but 
offending people for your sake, John; and for yours, Miss Mary. 
By the by, I’ve brought vou such a doll!” 

A doll! Mary’s pale face flushed a faint crimson. Did he 
think her such a child, then, this soldier; did he think her only 
a silly child, with no thought above a doll, when she would 
have gone out to India, and braved every peril of that cruel 
country, to be his nurse and comfort in fever and sickness, like 
the brave Sisters of Mercy she had read of in some of her 
novels ? 


42 JOHN MARCHMOm^S LEGACY. 

Edward Arundel saw that faint crimson glow lighting up-in 
her face. 

“I beg your pardon, Miss Marchmont,” he said. “ I was only 
joking; of course you are a young lady now, almost grown up. 
you know. Can you play chess ?” 

“No, Mr. Arundel.” 

“ 1 am sorry for that: for I have brought you a set of chess¬ 
men that once belonged to Dost Mohammed Khan. But I’ll 
teach you the game if you like?” 

“ Oh yes, Mr. Arundel; I should like it very, very much.” 

The young soldier could not help being amused by the little 
girl’s earnestness. She was about the same age as his sister 
Letitia: but oh, how widely different to that bouncing and 
rather wayward young lady, who tore the pillow-lace upon her 
muslin frocks, rumpled her long ringlets, rasped the skin off the 
sharp points of her elbows by repeated falls upon the gravel- 
paths at Dangerfield, and tormented a long-suffering Swiss at¬ 
tendant, half-lady’s-maid, half-governess, from morning till 
night! No fold was awry in Mary Marchmont’s simple black- 
silk frock; no plait disarranged in the neat cambric tucker that 
encircled the slender white throat. Intellect here reigned su¬ 
preme. Instead of the animal spirits of a thoughtless child 
there was a woman’s loving carefulness for others, a woman’s 
unselfishness and devotion. 

Edward Arundel did not understand all this, but perhaps the 
greater part of it. 

“She is a dear little thing,” he thought, as he watched her 
clinging to her father's arm; and then he ran off about March¬ 
mont Towers, and insisted upon being shown over the house; 
and, perhaps, for the first time since the young heir had siiot 
himself to death upon a bright September morning in a stubble- 
field within ear-shot of the park, the sound of merry laughter 
echoed through the long corridors, and resounded in the unoc¬ 
cupied rooms. 

Edward Arundel w T as in raptures with everything. There 
never was such a dear old place, he said. “ Gloomy,” “ dreary,” 
“ draughty,” pshaw!. Cut a few logs out of that wood at the 
back there, pile’em up in the wide chimneys, and set a light to 
’em, and Marchmont Towers would be like a baronial mansion 
at Christmas-time. He declared that every dingy portrait he 
looked at was a Rubens, or a Velasquez, or a Vandyke, a Hol¬ 
bein, or a Lely. 

“ Look at that fur border to the old woman’s black velvet 
gown, John; look at the coloring of the hands! Do you think 
anybody but Peter Paul could have painted that ? Do you see 
that girl with the blue satin stomacher and the flaxen ringlets? 
-—one of your ancestresses, Miss Mary, and very like you. If 
that isn’t in Sir Peter Lely’s best style—his earlier style, you 
know, before be was spoiled by royal patronage and got lazy—I 
know nothing of painting.” 

The young soldier ran on in this manner, as he hurried his 
host from room to room; now throwing open windows to look 
out at the wet prospect; now rapping against the wainscot to 


John march mo NT’s legacy, 4$ 

find secret hiding-places behind sliding panels; now stamping 
on the oak flooring in the hope of discovering a trap-door. Ho 
pointed out at least ten eligible sites for the building of the 
tennis-court; he suggested more alterations and improvements 
than a builder could have completed in a lifetime. The place 
brightened under the influence of his presence, as a landscape 
lights up under a burst of sudden sunshine breaking through a 
dull, gray sky. 

Mary Marchmont did not wait for the removal of the table¬ 
cloth that evening, but dined with her father and his friend in 
a snug oak-paneled chamber, half breakfast-room, half library, 
which opened out of the western drawing-room. How different 
Edward Arundel was to all the rest of the world, Miss March - 
mout thought; how gay, how bright, how genial, how happv! 
The county families, mustered in their fullest force, couldn't 
make such mirth among them as this young soldier in his sin¬ 
gle person. 

The evening was an evening in fairy-land. Life was some¬ 
times like the last scene in a pantomime, after all, with rose- 
colored cloud and golden sunlight. 

One of the Marchmont servants went over to Swampington 
early the next day to fetch Mr. Arundel’s portmanteaus from 
the Rectory; and after dinner upon that second evening Mary 
Marchmont took her seat opposite Edward, and listened rev¬ 
erently while he explained to her the moves upon the chess¬ 
board. 

•‘So you don’t know my cousin Olivia?” the young soldier 
said, by and by. “That's odd! I should have thought she 
would have called upon you long before this.” 

Maiy Marchmont shook her head. 

“ No,’’ she said; “ Miss Arundel has never been to see us; and 
T should so like to have seen her, because she would have told 
me about you. Mr. Arundel has called once or twice upon papa; 
but I have never seen him. He is not our clergyman, you know; 
Marchmont Towers belongs to Kemberling Parish.” 

“To be sure; and Swampington is ten miles off. But, for all 
that, 1 should have thought Olivia would have called upon you. 
I’ll drive you over to-morrow, if John thinks me whip enough 
to trust you with me, and you shall see Livy. The Rectory’s 
such a queer old place!” * , 

Perhaps Mr. Marchmont w-as rather doubtful as to the propri¬ 
ety of committing his little girl to Edward Arundel’s charioteer- 
ship for a ten-mile drive upon a wretched road. Be it as it 
might, a lumbering barouche, with a pair of overfed horses, was 
ordered next morning, instead of the high, old-fashioned gig 
which the soldier had proposed driving; and the safety of the 
two young people was confided to a sober old coachman, rather 
sulky at the prospect of a drive to Swampington so soon after 
the rainy weather. 

It does not rain always even in this part of Lincolnshire; and 
the July morning was bright and pleasant; the low hedges fra¬ 
grant with starry, opal-tinted wild roses and waxen honeysuckle, 
the yellowing corn waving in the light summer breeze. Mary 


44 


JOHN MARCmrONT'S LEGACY. 


assured her companion that she had no objection whatever to 
the odor of cigar smoke; so'Mr. Arundel lolled upon the com¬ 
fortable cushions of the barouche, with his back to the horses, 
smoking cheroots and talking gayly, while Miss Marchmont sat 
in the place of state opposite to him. A happy drive: a drive in 
a fairy chariot through regions of fairy-land, forever and for¬ 
ever to be remembered by Mary Marchmont. 

They left the straggling hedges and the yellowing corn behind 
them by and by, as they drew near the outskirts of Swamping- 
ton. The town lies lower even than the surrounding country, 
flat and low as that country is. A narrow and dismal river 
crawls at the base of a half-ruined wall, which once formed 
part of the defenses of the place. Black barges lie at anchor 
here, and a stone bridge, guarded by a toll-house, spans the 
river. Mr. Marchmont’s carriage lumbered across the bridge, 
and under an archway, low, dark, stony, and grim, into a nar¬ 
row street of solid, well-built houses, low, dark, stony, and grim, 
like the archway, but bearing the stamp of reputable occupa¬ 
tion. I believe the grass grew, and still grows, in this street, as 
it does in all the other streets and in the market-place of Swamp- 
ington. They are all pretty much in the same style, these 
streets—all stony, narrow, dark, and grim; and they wind and 
twist hither and thither, and in and out, in a manner utterly 
bewildering to the luckless stranger, who, seeing that they are 
all alike, has no landmarks for his guidance. 

There are two handsome churches, both bearing an early 
date in the history of Norman supremacy; one crowded into an 
inconvenient corner of a back street, and choked by the 
houses built up round about it; the other lying a little out of 
the town, upon a swampy waste looking toward the sea, which 
flows within a mile of Swampington. Indeed, there is no lack 
of water in that Lincolnshire borough. The river winds about 
the outskirts of the town; unexpected creeks and inlets meet 
you at every angle: shallow pools lie here and there about the 
marshy suburbs; and in the dim distance the low line of the 
gray sea meets the horizon. 

But perhaps the positive ugliness of tlfe town is something 
redeemed bj the vague air of romance and old-world mystery 
which pervades it. It is an exceptional place, and somewhat 
interesting thereby. The great Norman church upon the 
swampy waste, the scattered tombstones, bordered by the low 
and moss-grown walls, make a picture which is apt to dwell in 
the minds of those who look upon it, although it is by no means 
a pretty picture. The Rectory lies close to the churchyard; and 
a wicket-gate opens from Mr. Arundel’s garden into a narrow 
pathway, leading across a patch of tangled grass and through a 
lane of sunken and lop sided tombstones, to the low vestry-door. 
The Rectory itself is a long, irregular building, to which one in¬ 
cumbent after another has built the additional chamber, or 
chimney, or porch, or bay-window, necessary for his accom¬ 
modation. There is very little garden in front of the house, j 
but a patch of lawn and shrubbery and a clump of old trees at 
the back. 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 45 

“ It’s not a pretty house, is it. Miss Marchmout ?” asked Ed¬ 
ward. as he lifted his companion out of the carriage. 

“No, not very pretty,” Mary answered; “but I don’t think 
anything is pretty in Lincolnshire. Oh, there's the seal” she 
cried, looking suddenly across the marshes to the low gray line 
in the distance. “ How I wish we were as near the sea at 
Marchmont Towers!” 

The young lady had something cf a romantic passion for the 
wide-spreading ocean. It was an unknown region, that stretched 
far away, and that was wonderful and beautiful by reason of 
its solemn mystery. All her Corsair stories were allied to that 
far, fathomless deep. The white sail in the distance was Con¬ 
rad’s, perhaps; and he was speeding homeward to find Medora 
dead in her lonely watch-tower, with fading flowers upon her 
breast. The black hull yonder was the bark of some terrible 
pirate bound on rapine and ravage. (She was a coal-barge, I 
have no doubt, sailing Londonward with her black burden.) 
Nymphs and Lurleis, Mermaids and Mermen, and tiny water- 
babies with silvery tails, forever splashing in the sunshine, were 
all more or less associated with the long gray line toward which 
Mary Marcbmont looked with solemn, yearning eyes. 

“ We’ll drive down to the seashore some morning. Polly,” said 
Mr. Arundel. He was beginning to call her Polly, now and 
then, in the easy familiarity of their intercourse. “ We’ll spend 
a long day on the sands, and [’ll smoke cberoots while you pick 
up shells and seaweed.” 

Miss Marchmout clasped her hands in silent rapture. Her 
face was irradiated by the new light of happiness. How good 
he was to her, this brave soldier, who must undoubtedly be 
made Commander-in-chief of the Army of the Indus in a year 
or sol 

Edward Arundel led his companion across the flagged way 
between the iron gate of the Rectory garden and a half-glass 
door leading into the hall. Out of this simple hall, only fur¬ 
nished with a couple of chairs, a barometer, and an umbrella- 
stand, they went, without announcement, into a low, old-fash¬ 
ioned room, half study, half parlor, where a young lady was 
sitting at a table writing. 

She rose as Edward opened the door, and came to meet him. 

“At last!” she said; “I thought your rich friends engrossed 
all your attention.” 

She paused, seeing Mary. 

“ This is Miss Marchmont, Olivia,” said Edward; “ the only 
daughter of my old friend. You must be very fond of her, 
please; for she is a dear little girl, and I know she means to love 
you.” 

Mary lifted her soft brown eyes to the face of the young lady, 
and then dropped her eyelids suddenly, as if half frightened by 
what she had seen there. 

What was it? What was it in Olivia Arundel’s handsoun 
face from which those who looked at her so often shrank, re¬ 
pelled and disappointed ? Every line in these perfectly-modeled 
features was beautiful. Perhaps it was too much like a marble 



46 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


mask, exquisitely chiseled, but wanting in variety of expres¬ 
sion. The handsome mouth was rigid; the dark gray eyes had 
a cold light in them. The thick bands of raven-black hair were 
drawn tightly off a square forehead, which was the brow of an 
intellectual and determined man rather than of a woman. Yes, 
womanhood was the something wanted in Olivia Arundel’s face. 
Intellect, resolution, courage, are rare gifts; but they are not 
the gifts whose tokens we look for most anxiously in a woman’s 
face. If Miss Arundel had been a queen, her diadem would 
have become her nobly, and she might have been a very great 
queen: but Heaven help the wretched creature who had ap¬ 
pealed from minor tribunals to Tier mercy! Heaven help delin¬ 
quents of every kind whose last lingering hope had been in her 
compassion! 

Perhaps Mary Marchmont vaguely felt something of all this. 
At any rate, the enthusiasm with which she had been ready to 
regard Edward Arundel cooled suddenly beneath the winter in 
that pale, quiet face. 

Miss Arundel said a few words to her guest, kindly enough, 
but rather too much as if she bad been addressing a child of six. 
Mary, who was accustomed to be treated as a woman, was 
wounded by her manner. 

“ How different she is to Edward!” thought Miss Marchmont. 
“ I shall never like her as I like him.” 

“So this is the pale-faced child who is to have March¬ 
mont Towers by and by,” thought Miss Arundel, “ and these 
rich friends are the people for whom Edward stays away from 
us.” 

The lines about the rigid mouth grew harder, the cold 
light in the gray eyes grew colder, as the young lady thought 
this. 

It was thus that these two women met; while one was but a 
child in years; while the other was yet in the early bloom of 
womanhood; these two, who were predestined to hate each other, 
and inflict suffering upon each other in the days that were to 
come. It was thus that they thought of one another; each with 
an unreasoning dread, an undefined aversion gathering in her 
breast. 

Six weeks passed, and Edward Arundel kept his promise of 
shooting the partridges on the Marchmont preserves. The 
wood behind the Towers and the stubbled corn-fields on the 
home-farm bristled wdth game. The young soldier heartily 
enjoyed himself through that delicious first week in September; 
and came home every afternoon, with a heavy game-bag and 
a light heart, to boast of his prowess before" Mary and her 
father. 

The young man was by this time familiar with every nook and 
corner of Marchmont Towers; and the builders were already at 
vrork at the tennis-court which John had promised to erect for 
his friend’s pleasure. The site ultimately chosen was a bleak 
corner of the eastern front, looking to the wood; but as Edward 
declared the spot in every way eligible, John had no inclination 
to find fault with his friend’s choice. There was other work for 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


47 


the builders; for Mr. Arundel had taken a wonderful fancy to a 
ruined boat-house upon the brink of the river, and thisboat- 
house was to-be rebuilt and restored, and made into a delightful 
pavilion, in the upper chambers of which Mary might sit with 
her father in the hot summer weather, while Mr. Arundel kept 
a couple of trim wherries in the recesses below. 

So you see the young man made himself verv much at home, 
in his own innocent, boyish fashion, at Marchmont Towers. 
But as he bad brought life and light to the old Lincolnshire 
mansion nobody was inclined to quarrel with him for any 
liberties which he might choose to take, and every one looked 
forward sorrowfully to the dark days before Christmas, at which 
time he was under a promise to return to Dangerfield Park, 
there to spend the remainder of his leave of absence. 


CHAPTER VII. 

OLIVIA. 

While busy workmen were employed at Marchmont Towers, 
hammering at the fragile wooden walls of the tennis-court— 
while Mary Marchmont and Edward Arundel wandered, with 
the dogs at their heels, among the rustle of the fallen leaves in 
the wood behind the great gaunt Lincolnshire mansion—Olivia, 
the rector’s daughter, sat in her father’s quiet study, or walked 
to and fro in the gloomy streets of Swampington, doing her duty 
day by day. 

Yes, the life of this woman is told in these few words: she did 
her duty. From the earliest age at which responsibility can 
begin she bad done her duty, uncomplainingly, unswervingly, 
as it seemed to those who watched her. 

She was a good woman. The bishop of the diocese had spe¬ 
cially complimented her for her active devotion to the holy work 
which falls somewhat heavily upon the only daughter of a 
widowed rector. All the stately dowagers about Swampington 
were loud in the praise of Olivia Arundel. Such devotion, such 
untiring zeal in a young person of three-and-twenty years of 
age were really most laudable, these solemn elders said, in tones 
of supreme patronage; for the young saint of whom they spoke 
were shabby gowms, and was the portionless daughter of a poor 
man who had let the world slip by him, and who sat now amidst 
the dreary ruins of a w-asted life, looking yearningly backward 
with hollow, regretful eyes, and bewailing the chances he had 
lost. Hubert Arundel loved his daughter; loved her w r ith that 
passionate, sorrowful affection we feel for those who suffer for 
our sins, whose lives have been blighted by our follies. 

Every shabby garment which Olivia w ore was a separate re¬ 
proach to her father; every deprivation she endured stung 
him as cruelly as if she had turned upon him and loudly up¬ 
braided him for his wasted life and hi9 squandered patrimony. 
He loved her; and he watched her day after day, doing her 
duty to him as to all others; doing her duty forever and forever; 
but when he most yearned to take her to his heart, her own cold 
perfections arose and separated him from the child he loved. 



48 JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

What was he but a poor, vacillating, erring creature; weak, 
supine, idle, epicurean; unworthy to approach this girl, who 
never seemed to sicken of the hardness of her life—who never 
grew weary of well-doing? 

But how was it that, for all her goodness, Olivia Arundel 
won so small a share of earthly reward? I do not speak of the 
gold and jewels and other worldly benefits with which the 
fairies in our children’s story-books reward the benevolent mor¬ 
tals who take compassion upon them in the guise of old women; 
but rather of the love and gratitude, the tenderness and bless¬ 
ings which usually wait upon the footsteps of those who do 
good deeds. Olivia Arundel’s charities were never-ceasing; her 
life was one perpetual sacrifice to her father’s parishioners. 
There was no natural womanly vanity, no simple girlish fancy, 
which this woman had not trodden under foot, and trampled 
out in the hard pathway she had chosen for herself. 

The poor people knew this. Rheumatic men and women, 
crippled and Led-ridden, knew that the blankets which covered 
them had been bought out of money that would have purchased 
silk dresses for the rector’s handsome daughter. They knew 
this. They knew that, through frost and snow, through storm 
and rain, Olivia Arundel would come to sit beside their dreary 
hearths, their desolate sick-beds, and read holy books to them; 
sublimely indifferent to the foul weather, without, to the stifling 
atmosphere within, to dirt, discomfort, poverty, inconvenience; 
heedless of all except the performance of the task she had set 
herself. 

People knew this, and they were grateful to Miss Arundel, 
and submissive and attentive in her presence; they gave her 
such return as they were able to give for the benefits, spiritual 
and temporal, which she bestowed upon them; but they did not 
love her. 

They spoke of her in reverential accents, and praised her 
whenever her name was mentioned; but they spoke with care¬ 
less eyes and unfaltering voices. Her virtues were beautiful, of 
course, as virtues in the abstract must always be; but T think 
there was a want of individuality in her goodness, a lack of 
personal tenderness in her kindness, which separated from her 
the people she benefited. 

Perhaps there was something almost chilling in the dull 
monotony of Miss Arundel’s benevolence. There was no blem¬ 
ish of moral weakness upon the good deeds she performed; and 
the recipients of her bounties, seeing her so far off, grew afraid 
of her, even by reason of her goodness, and could not love her. 

She made no favorites among her father's parishioners. Of 
all the school-children she had taught she had never chosen one 
curly-headed urchin for a pet. She had no good days and bad 
days; she was never foolishly indulgent or extravagantly cor¬ 
dial. She was always the same-Church-of-England charity 
personified, meting out all mercies by line and rule; doing good 
with a note-book and a pencil in her hand; looking on every 
side with calm, scrutinizing eyes; rigidly just, terribly perfect. 

It was a fearfully monotonous, narrow and uneventful life 


JOBX MARCHMONT'8 LEGACY, 


40 


which Olivia Arundel led at Swampington Rectory. At three- 
and-twenty years of age she could have written her history upon 
a few pages. The world outside that dull Lincolnshire town 
was shaken by convulsions, and made irrecognizable by repeated 
change; but all these outer changes and revolutions made them¬ 
selves but little felt in the quiet grass-grown streets, and the flat 
surrounding swamps, within whose narrow boundary Olivia 
Arundel had lived from infancy to womanhood, performing 
and repeating the same duties from day to day, with no other 
progress to mark the lapse of her existence than the slow alter¬ 
nations of the seasons, and the dark hollow circles which had 
lately deepened beneath her gray eyes, and the depressed lines, 
about the corners of her firm lower lip. 

These outward tokens, beyond her own control, alone betrayed^ 
this woman’s secret. She was weary of her life. She sickened 
under the dull burden which she had borne so long, and carried 
so patiently. The slow' round of duty was loathsome to her. 
The horrible, narrow, unchanging existence, shut in by huge 
walls, which bounded her on every side and kept her prisoner 
to herself, was odious to her. The powerful intellect revolted 
against the fetters that bound and galled it. The proud heart 
beat with murderous violence against the bonds that kept it 
captive. 

‘•Is my life always to be this—always, always, always?” 
The passionate nature burst forth sometimes, and the voice that 
had so long beeu stifled cried aloud in the black stillness of the 
night: “ Is it to go on forever and forever, like the slow river 
that creeps under the broken wall? O my God! is the lot of an¬ 
other woman never to be mine? Am I never to be loved and 
admired; never to be sought and chosen? Is my life to be all 
of one dull, gray, colorless monotony; without one sudden gleam 
of sunshine, without one burst of rainbow-light ?” 

How shall I anatomize this woman, who. gifted with no 
womanly tenderness of nature, unendowed with that pitiful and 
unreasoning affection which makes womanhood beautiful, yet 
tried, and tried unceasingly, to do her duty and to be good ; cling¬ 
ing in the very blindness of her soul, to the rigid formulas of 
her faith, but unable to seize upon its spirit ? Some latent com¬ 
prehension of the want in her nature made her only the more 
scrupulous in the performance of those duties which she had 
meted out for herself. The holy sentences she had heard Sun¬ 
day after Sunday, feebly read by her father, haunted her per¬ 
petually, and would not be put away from her. The tenderness 
in every word of those familiar gospels was a reproach to the 
want of tenderness in her own heart. She could be good to her 
father’s parishioners, and she could make sacrifices for them; 
but she could not love them any more than they could love her. 

That divine and universal pity, that spontaneous and bound¬ 
less affection, which is the chief loveliness of womanhood and 
Christianity, had no part in her nature. She could understand 
Judith with the Assyrian general’s gory head held aloft in her 
uplifted hand; but she could not comprehend that diviner mys¬ 
tery of sinful Magdalepe sitting at her Master’s feet with the 


SO JOHN MAUCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

shame and lo^e in her face half-hidden by a veil of drooping 
hair. 

No; Olivia Arundel was not a good woman in the commoner 
sense we attach to the phrase. It was not natural to her to be 
gentle and tender, to be beneficent, compassionate, and kind, as 
it is to the women we are accustomed to call “ good.” She was 
a woman who was forever fighting against her nature; who was 
forever striving to do right; forever walking painfully upon the 
difficult road mapped out for her; forever measuring herself by 
the standard she had set up for her self-abasement. And who 
shall say that such a woman as this, if she persevere unto the 
end, shall not wear a brighter crown than her more gentle sis¬ 
ters—the starry circlet of a martyr ? 

If she persevere unto the end? But was Olivia Arundel the 
woman to do this? The deepening circles about her eyes, the 
hollowing cheeks, and the feverish restlessness of manner which 
she could not always control, told how terrible the long struggle 
had become to her. If she could have died then—if she had 
fallen beneath the weight of her burden—what a record of sin 
and anguish might have remained unwritten in the history of 
woman's life! But this woman is one of those wdio can suffer, 
and yet not die. She bore her burden a little longer; only to 
fling it down by and by, and to abandon herself to the eager 
devils who had been watching for her so untiringly. 

Hubert Arundel was afraid of his daughter. The knowledge 
that he had wronged her—w ronged her even before her birth by 
the foolish waste of his patrimony, and wronged her through 
life by his lack of energy in seeking such advancement as a 
more ambitious man might have won—the knowledge of this, 
and of his daughter’s superior virtues, combined to render the 
father ashamed and humiliated by the presence of his only 
child. The struggle between this fear and his passionate love 
of her was a very painful one; but fear had the mastery, and 
the Rector of Swampington w>as content to stand aloof, mutely 
watchful of his daughter, w ondering feebly whether she w’as 
happy, striving vainly to discover that one secret, that keystone 
of the soul, which must exist in every nature, however out¬ 
wardly commonplace. 

Mr. Arundel had hoped that his daughter would marry, and 
marry well, even at Swampington; for there w T ere rich young 
Jand-owmers who visited at the Rectory. But Olivia’s hand¬ 
some face won her no admirers, and at tbree-and-twenty Miss 
Arundel had received no offer of marriage. The father re¬ 
proached himself for this. It was he w ho had blighted the life 
of his penniless girl; it was his fault that no suitors came to 
woo his motherless child. Yet many dowerless maidens have 
been sought and loved; and I do not think it was Olivia’s lack 
of fortune which kept admirers at bay. I believe it w ? as rat her 
that inherent want of tenderness which chilled and dispirited 
the timid young Lincolnsnire squires. 

Had Olivia ever been in love? Hubert Arundel constantly 
asked himself this question. He did so because he saw that 
some blighting influence, even beyond the poverty and dull* 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY . 


51 


ness of her home, had fallen noon the life of his only child. 
What was it? What was it? Was it some hopeless attachment, 
some secret tenderness, which had never won the sweet return 
of love for love ? 

He would no more have ventured to question his daughter 
upon this subject than he would have dared to ask his fair 
young queen, newly married in those days, whether she was 
happy with her handsome husband. 

Miss Arundel stood by the Rectory gate in the early Septem¬ 
ber evening, watching the western sunlight on the lovv sea-line 
beyond the marshes. She was wearied and worn out by a long 
day devoted to visiting among her parishioners; and she stood 
with her elbow leaning on the gate, and her head resting on her 
hand, in an attitude peculiarly expressive of fatigue. She had 
thrown off her bonnet, and her black hair was pushed carelessly 
from her forehead. Those masses of hair had not that purple 
luster, nor yet that wanderiug glimmer of red gold, which gives 
peculiar beauty to some raven tresses. Olivia’s hair was long 
and luxuriant; but it was of that dead, inky blackness, which is 
all shadow. It was dark, fathomless, inscrutable, like herself. 
The cold gray eyes looked thoughtfully seaward. Another day’s 
duty had been done. Long chapters of Holy Writ had been read 
to troublesome old women afflicted with perpetual coughs; 
stifling, airless cottages had been visited; the dull, unvarying 
track had been beaten by the patient feet, and the yellow sun 
was going down upon another joyless day. But did the still 
evening hour bring peace to that restless spirit? No; by the 
rigid compression of the lips, by the feverish luster in the eyes, 
by the faint hectic flush in the oval cheeks, by every outward 
sign of inward unrest, Olivia Arundel was not at peace. The 
listlessness of her attitude was merely the listlessness of physical 
fatigue. The mental struggle was not finished with the close of 
the day’s work. 

The young lady looked up suddenly as the tramp of a horse’s 
hoofs, slow and lazy-sounding on the smooth road, met her ear. 
Her eyes dilated, and her breath went and came more rapidly, 
but she did not stir from her weary attitude. 

The horse was from the stable at March mont Towers, and the 
rider was Mr. Arundel. He came smiling to the Rectory gate, 
with the low sunshine glittering in his yellow hair, and the 
light of careless, indifferent happiness irradiating his haudsome 
face. 

“You must have thought I’d forgotten you and my uncle, 
my dear Livy,” he said, as he sprung lightly from his horse, 
“ We’ve been'so busy with the tennis-court, and the boat-house, 
and the partridges, and goodness knows what besides at the 
Towers, that I couldn’t get the time to ride over till this even¬ 
ing. But to-day we dined early, on purpose that I might have 
the chance of getting here. I come upon an important mission, 
Livy. I assure you.” 

“ What do you mean ?” 

There was no change in Miss Arundel’s voice when she spoke 
to her cousin; but there was a change* not easily to be defined* 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


in her face when she looked at him. It seemed as if that weary 
hopelessness of expression which had settled on her countenance 
lately grew more weary, more hopeless, as she turned toward 
this bright young soldier, glorious in the beauty of his own 
light-heartedness. It may have been merely the sharpness of 
contrast which produced this effect. It may have been an 
actual change arising out of some secret hidden in Olivia’s 
breast. 

“What do you mean by an important mission, Edward?” she 
said. 

She had need to repeat the question; for the young man’s atten¬ 
tion had wandered from her, and he was watching his horse as 
the animal cropped the tangled herbage about the Rectory gate. 

“ Why, I’ve come with an invitation to a dinner at March- 
mont Towers. There’s to be a dinner-party; and, in point of 
fact, it’s to be given on purpose for you and ray uncle. John 
and Polly are full of it. You’ll come, won’t you, Livy ?” 

Miss Arundel shrugged her shoulders, with an impatient sigh. 

“I hate dinner-parties,” she said; “but of course, if papa 
accepts Mr. Marchmont’s invitation I cannot refuse to go. 
Papa must choose for himself.” 

There has been some interchange of civilities between March- 
mont Towers and Swampington Rectory during the six weeks 
which had passed since Mary’s introduction to Olivia Arundel; 
and this dinner-party was the result of John’s simple desire to 
do honor to bis friend’s kindred. 

“ Oh, you must come, Livy,” Mr. Arundel exclaimed. “ The 
tennis-court is going on capitally. I want you to give us your 
opinion again. Shall I take my horse round to the stable ? I 
am going to stop an hour or two. and ride back by moonlight.” 

Edward Arundel took the bridle in his hand, and the cousius 
walked slowly round by tbe low garden-wall to a dismal and 
rather dilapidated stable at the back of the Rectory, where Hu¬ 
bert Arundel kept a wall-eyed white horse, long-legged, shallow¬ 
chested, and large-headed, and a fearfully and wonderfully 
made phaeton, with high wheels and a moldy leathern hood. 

Olivia walked by the young soldier’s side with that air of 
weary indifference that had so grown upon her very lately. Her 
eyelids drooped with a look of sullen disdain; but the gray eyes 
glanced furtively now and again at her companion's handsome 
face. He was very handsome. The glitter of golden hair and 
of bright fearless blue eyes; the careless grace peculiar to the 
kind of man we call “ a swell the gay insouciance of an easy, 
candid, generous nature—all combined to make Edward Arun¬ 
del singularly attractive. These spoiled children of nature de¬ 
mand our admiration, in very spite of ourselves. These beauti¬ 
ful useless creatures call upon us to rejoice in their valueless 
beauty, like the flaunting poppies in the corn-field, and the 
gaudy wild-flo wers in the grass. 

The darkness of Olivia’s face deepened after each furtive 
glance she cast at her cousin. Could it be that this girl, to 
whom nature had given strength but denied grace, envied the 
superficial attractions of the young man at her side? She did 


JOHN MA RCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


m 

envy him; she envied him that sunny temperament which was 
so unlike her own; she envied him that wondrous power of 
taking life lightly. Why should existence be so bright and 
careless to him, while to her it was a terrible fever-dream, a 
long sickness, a never-ceasing battle? 

“ Is my uncle in the house?” Mr. Arundel asked, as he strolled 
from the stable into the garden with his cousin by his side. 

“No; he has been out since dinner,” Olivia answered; “but 
I expect him back every minute. I came out into the garden— 
the house seemed so hot and stifling to-night, and I have been 
sitting in close cottages all day.” 

“Sitting in close cottages!” repeated Edward. “Ah, to be 
sure; visiting your rheumatic old pensioners, I suppose. How 
good you are, Olivia !” 

“Good!” 

She echoed the word in the very bitterness of a scorn that 
could not be repressed. 

“Yes; everybody says so. TheMillwards were at Marchmont 
Towers the other day, and they were talking of you, and prais¬ 
ing your goodness, and speaking of your schools, and your blan 
ket associations, and your invalid societies, and your relief clubs, 
and all your plans for the parish. Why, yon must work as hard 
as a prime minister, Livy, by their account; you are only a few 
years older than me.” 

Only a few years! She started at the phrase, and bit her 

lip. 

“ I was three-and-twenty last month,” she said. 

“ Ah, yes; to be sure. And I'm one-and-twentj r . Then you’re 
only two years older than me, Livy. But, then, you see, you’re 
so clever, that you seem much older than you are. You make 
a fellow feel rather afraid of you, you know. Upon my word 
you do, Livy.” 

Miss Arundel did not reply to this speech of her cousin's. She 
was walking by his side up and down a narrow graveled path¬ 
way, bordered by a hazel-hedge; she had gathered one of the 
slender twigs, and was idly stripping away the fluffy ends. 

“ What do you think, Livy?” cried Edward, suddenly, burst¬ 
ing out laughing at the end of the question. “What do you 
think? It’s my belief you’ve made a conquest.” 

“ What do you mean ?” 

“ There you go; turning upon a fellow as if you could eat 
him. Yes, Livy; it’s no use your looking savage. You’ve made 
a conquest; and of one of the best fellows in the world, too. 
John Marchmont’s in love with you.” 

Olivia Arundel’s face flushed a vivid crimson to the roots of 
her black hair. 

“ How dare you come here to insult me, Edward Arundel ?” 
she cried, passionately. 

“Insult you? Now, Livy dear, that’s too bad, upon my 
word,” remonstrated the young man. “I come and tell you 
that as good a man as ever breathed is over head and ears in 
love with you, and that you may be mistress of one of the finest 


54 


JOHN MARCHMONT >8 LEGACY. 


estates iu Lincolnshire if you please, and you turn round upon 
me like no end of furies.” 

“ Because I hate to hear you talk nonsense,” answered. Olivia, 
her bosom still heaving with that first outburst of emotion, but 
her voice suppressed and cold. “ Am I so beautiful, or so ad¬ 
mired or beloved, that a man who has not seen me half a 
dozen times should fall in love with me? Do those who know 
me estimate me so much, or prize me so highly, that a stranger 
should think of me ? You do insult me Edward Arundel, when 
you talk as you have talked to night.” 

She looked out toward the low yellow light in the sky with a 
black gloom upon her face, which no reflected glimmer of the 
sinking sun could illumine; a settled darkness, near akin to the 
utter blackness of despair. 

“But, good heavens, Olivia, what do you mean?” cried the 
young man. “ I tell you something that 1 think a good joke, 
and you go and make a tragedy out of it. If I’d told Letitia that 
a rich widower had fallen in iove with her, she’d think it the 
finest fun in the world.” 

“ I’m not your sister Letitia.” 

“ No; but I wish you’d half as. good a temper as she has, Livy. 
However, never mind: I’ll say no more. If poor old Marchmont 
has fallen in love with you, that’s his look-out. Poor dear old 
boy, he’s let out the secret of his weakness half a dozen ways 
within these last few days. It’s Miss Arundel this, and Miss 
Arundel the other; so handsome, so dignified, so ladylike, so 
good! That’s the way he goes on, poor simple old dear, without 
having the remotest notion that he’s making a confounded foul 
of himself.” 

Olivia tossed the rumpled hair from her forehead with an im¬ 
patient gesture of her hand. 

“ Why should this Mr. Marchmont think all this of me?” she 
said, “ when-” She stopped abruptly. 

“ When—what, Livy?” 

“When other people don’t think it.” 

“ How do you know what other people think? You haven’t 1 
asked them, T suppose?” 

The young soldier treated his cousin in very much the same 
free-and-easy manner which he displayed toward his sister 
Letitia. It would have been almost difficult for him to recognize 
any degree in his relationship to the two girls. He loved Letitia 
better than Olivia; but his affection for both was of exactly the 
same character. 

Hubert Arundel came into the garden, wearied out, like his 
daughter, while the two cousins were walking under the shadow 
of the neglected hazels. He declared his willingness to accept 
the invitation to Marchmont Towers, and promised to answer 
John’s ceremonious note the next day. 

“ Cookson, from Kemberling, will be there, I suppose,” he said, 
alluding to a brother parson, “and the usual set. Well. I’ll 
come, Ned, if you wish it. You’d like to go, Olivia ?” 

“ If you like, papa.” 

• There was a duty to be performed now—the duty of placid 


JOHN MARCHMONT *8 LEGACY. 


obedience to her father; and Miss Arundel’s manner changed 
from angry impatience to a grave respect. She owed no special 
duty, be it remembered, to her cousin. She had no line or rule 
by which to measure her conduct to him. 

She stood at the gate nearly an hour later, and watched the 
young man ride away in the dim moonlight. If every separate 
tramp of his horse’s’hoofs had struck upon her heart, it could 
scarcely have given her more pain than she felt as the sound of 
those slow footfalls died away in the distance. 

Oh, my God!” she cried, “ is this madness to undo all that I 
have done? Is this folly to be the climax of my dismal life? 
Am I to die for the love of a frivolous, fair-haired boy, who 
laughs in my face when he tells me that his friend has pleased 
to ‘ take a fancy to me ?’ ” 

She walked away toward the house; then stopping, with a 
sudden shiver, she turned, and went back to the hazel-alley she 
bad paced with Edward Arundel. 

“ Oh, my narrow life!” she muttered between her set teeth; 

‘ J my narrow life! It is that which has made me the slave of 
this madness. I love him because he is the brightest and fairest 
thing I have ever seen. I love him because he brings me all I 
have ever known of a more beautiful world than that I live in. 
Bah! why do I reason with myself?” she cried, with a sudden 
change of manner. “I love him because I am mad.” 

She paced up and down the hazel-shaded pathway till the 
moonlight grew broad and full, and every ivy-grown gable of 
the Rectory stood sharply out against the vivid purple of the 
sky. She paced up and down, trying to trample the folly within 
her under her feet as she went; a fierce, passionate, impul¬ 
sive woman, fighting against her mad love for a bright-faced 
boy. 

“ Two years older—only two years!” she said; “ but he spoke 
of the difference between us as if it had been half a century. 
And then I am so clever, that I seem older than I am, and he is 
afraid of me! Is it for this that I have sat night after night in 
my father’s study, poring over the books that were too dif¬ 
ficult for him ? What have I made of myself in my pride of , 
intellect? What reward have I won for my patience?” ( 

Olivia Arundel looked back at her long life of duty—a dull, 
dead level, unbroken by one of those monuments which mark 
the desert of the past; a desolate flat, unlovely as the marshes 
between the low Rectory wall and the shimmering gray sea. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

TEMPTATION. 

Mr. Richard Paulette, of that eminent legal firm Paulette, 
Paulette & Mathevvson, coming to Marchmont Towers on busi¬ 
ness, was surprised to behold the quiet ease with which the 
sometime copying clerk received the punctilious country gentry 
who came to sit at his board and do him honor. 

Of all the legal fairy-tales, of all tho parchment-recorded ro¬ 
mances, of all the poetry run into affidavits, in which the solid- 



JOHN MAH OH MONT *8 LEGACY. 


5 « 

itor had ever been concerned, this si ory seemed the strangest. 
Not so very strange in itself, for such romances are not uncom¬ 
mon in the history of a lawyer’s experience; but strange by 
reason of the tranquil manner in which John Marcbmont ac< 
cepted his new position, and did the honors of his house to his 
late employer. 

“ Ah, Paulette,” Edward Arundel said, clapping the solicitor 
on. the back, “ I don’t suppose you believed me when I lold you 
that my friend here was heir presumptive to a handsome fort* 
une.” 

The dinner-party at the Towers was conducted with that 
stately grandeur peculiar to such solemnities. There was the 
usual round of country talk and parish talk; the hunting squires 
leading the former section of the discourse, the rectors and rec¬ 
tors’ wives supporting the latter part of the conversation. You 
heard on one side that Martha Harris’ husband had left off 
drinking, and attended church morning and evening; and on 
the other, that the old gray fox that had been hunted nine sea¬ 
sons between Crackbin Bottom and Hollowcraft Gorse had per¬ 
ished ignobly in the poultry-yard of a recusant farmer. While 
your left ear became conscious of the fact that little Billy Smith- 
ers had fallen into a copper of scalding water, your right re¬ 
ceived the dismal tidings that all the young partridges had been 
drowned by the rains after St. Swithin, and that there were 
hardly any of this year’s birds, sir. 

Mary Marchmont had listened to gayer talk in Oakley Street 
than any that was to be heard that night in her father’s draw¬ 
ing-rooms, except indeed when Edward Arundel left off flirting 
with some pretty girls in blue, and hovered near her side for a 
little while, quizzing the company. Heaven knows the young 
soldier’s jokes were commonplace enough; but Mary admired 
him as the most brilliant and accomplished of wits. 

“ How do you like my cousiu. Polly ?” he asked, at last. 

‘'Your cousin, Miss Arundel?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ She is very handsome.” 

“Yes, I suppose so,” the young man answered, carelessly. 
“ Everybody says that Livy’s handsome; but it’s rather a cold 
style of beauty, isn’t it? A little too much of the Pallas Athene 
about it for my taste. I like those girls in blue, with the crinkly 
auburn hair—there’s a touch of red in it in the light—and the 
dimples. You’ve a. dimple, Polly, when you smile.” 

Miss Marchmont blushed as she received this information, and 
her soft brown eyes wandered away, looking very earnestly at 
the pretty girls in blue. She looked at them with a strange in¬ 
terest, eager to discover what it was that Edward admired. 

“But you haven’t answered my question, Polly,” said Mr. 
Arundel. “ I am afraid you have been drinking too much wine. 
Miss Marchmont, and muddling that sober little head of yours 
with the fumes of your papa’s tawny port, I asked you how 
you liked Olivia.” 

Mary blushed again. 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


57 


“1 don’t know Miss Arundel well enough to like her—yet,” 
she answered, timidly. 

“But shall you like her when you’ve known her longer? 
Don’t be Jesuitical, Polly. Likings and dislikings are instan¬ 
taneous and instinctive. I liked you before I’d eaten half a 
dozen mouthfuls of the roll you buttered for me at that break¬ 
fast in Oakley Street, Polly. You don’t like my cousin Olivia, 
miss; I can see that very plainly. You’re jealous of her.” 

“Jealous of her!” 

The bright color faded out of Mary Marchmont’s face and left 
her ashy pale. 

“ Do you like her, then ?” she asked. 

But Mr. Arundel was not such a coxcomb as to catch at the 
secret so naively betrayed in that breathless question. 

“No, Polly,” he said, laughing; “she's my cousin, you know, 
and I’ve known her all my life; and cousins are like sisters. 
One likes to tease and aggravate them, and all that; but one 
doesn’t fall in love with them. But I think I could mention 
somebody who thinks a great deal of Olivia.” 

“Who?” 


“ Your papa.” 

Mary looked at the young soldier in utter bewilderment. 

“ Papa!” she echoed. 

“Yes, Polly. How would you like a step-mamma? How 
would you like your papa to marry again?” 

Mary March mont started to her feet as if she would have gone 
to her father in the midst of all those spectators. John was 
standing near Olivia and her father, talking to them, and play 
ing nervously with his slender watch-chain when he addressed 
the young lady. 

“"My papa—marry again!” gasped Mary. “How dare you 
say such a thing,” Mr. Arundel?” 

Her childish devotion to her father arose in all its force; a 
flood of passionate emotion that overwhelmed her sensitive 
nature. Marry again! marry a woman who would separate him 
from his only child! Could he ever dream for one brief moment 
of such a horrible cruelty ?’’ 

She looked at Olivia’s sternly handsome face and trembled. 
She could almost picture that very woman standing between 
her and her father, and putting her away from him. Her in¬ 
dignation quickly melted into grief. Indignation, however 
intense, was always short-lived in that gentle nature. 

“Oh, Mr. Arundel!” she said, piteously, appealing to the 
young man: “papa would never, never, never marry again — 
would he?” 

“Not if it was to grieve you, Polly, I dare say,” Edward an¬ 


swered, soothingly. 

He had been dumfounded by Mary’s passionate sorrow. He 
had expected that she would have been rather pleased than 
otherwise at the idea of a young step mother--a companion in 
those vast lonely rooms, an instructress and a friend as she grew 
to womanhood. 

“ I was only talking nonsense, Polly darling,” he said, “ You. 


58 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY . 

mustn’t make yourself unhappy about any absurd fancies of 
mine. I think your papa admires my cousin Olivia; and I 
thought, perhaps, you’d be glad to have a step-mother. ’ 

“Glad to have any one who'd take papa’s love away from 
me?” Mary said, plaintively. “ Oh, Mr. Arundel, how could you 
think so?” , - 

In all their familiarity the little girl bad never learned to call 
her father’s friend by his Christian name, though he had often 
told her to do so. She trembled to pronounce that simple 
Saxon name, which was so beautiful and wonderful because it 
was his; but when she read a very stupid novel, in which the 
hero was a namesake of Mr. Arundel's, the vapid pages seemed 
to be phosphorescent with light wherever the name appeared 
upon them. 

I scarcely know why John Marchmont lingered bj r Miss Arun¬ 
del’s chair." He had heard her praises from every one. She was 
a paragon of goodness, an uncanonized saint, ever sacrificing 
herself for the benefit of others. Perhaps he was thinking that 
such a woman as this would be the best friend he could win for 
his little girl. He turned from the county matrons, the tender, 
kindly, motherly creatures, who would have been ready to take 
little Mary to the loving shelter of their arms, and looked to 
Olivia Arundel—this cold, perfect benefactress of the poor—for 
help in his difficulty. 

“ She who is so good to all her father’s parishioners, could not 
refuse to be kind to my poor Mary ?” he thought. 

But how was he to win this woman’s friendship for his dar¬ 
ling? He asked himself this question even in the midst of the 
frivolous people about him, and with the buzz of their conversa¬ 
tion in his ears. He was perpetually tormenting himself about 
the future of his darling, which seemed more dimly perplexing 
now than it had ever appeared in Oakley Street, when the Lin¬ 
colnshire property was a far-away dream, never to be realized. 
He felt that his brief lease of life was running out: he felt as if 
he and Mary had been standing upon a narrow tract of yellow 
sand, very bright, very pleasant under the sunshine, but with 
the slow-coming tide rising like a wall about them, and creeping 
stealthily onward to overwhelm them. 

Mary might gather bright-colored shells and wet sea-weed in 
her childish ignorance; but lie, who knew that the flood was 
coming, could but grow sick at heart with the dull horror of 
that hastening doom. If the black waters had been doomed to 
close over them both, the father might have been content to go 
down under the sullen waves, with his daughter clasped to his 
breast. But it was not to be so. He was to sink in that un¬ 
known stream, while she was left upon the tempest-tossed sur¬ 
face, to be beaten hither and thither, feebly battling with the 
stormy billows. 

Could John Marchmont be a Christian and yet feel this 
horrible dread of the death which must separate him from his 
daughter? I fear this frail, consumptive widower loved his 
child with an intensity of affection that is scarcely reconcilable 
with Christianity. Such great passions ae these must be put 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 


59 


away before the cross can be taken up and the troublesome 
path followed. In all love and kindness toward his fellow- 
creatures, in all patient endurance of the pains and troubles that 
befell himself, it would have been difficult to find a more single- 
hearted follower of Gospel teaching than John Marchmont; but 
in bis affection for his motherless child he was a very pagan. 
He set up an idol for himself, and bowed himself before it. 
Doubtful and fearful of the future, he looked hopelessly for¬ 
ward. He could not trust his orphan child into the hands of 
God, and drop away himself into the fathomless darkness, 
serene in the belief that she would be cared for and protected. 
No; he could not trust. He could be faithful for himself; simple 
and confiding as a child; but not for her. He saw the gloomy 
rocks lowering black in the distance; the pitiless wav< s beating 
far away yonder, impatient to devour the frail boat that was so 
soon to be left alone upon the waters. In the thick darkness of 
the future he could see no ray of light, except one—a new hope 
that had lately risen in his mind; the hope of winning some 
noble and perfect woman to be the future friend of his daughter. 

The days were past in which in his simplicity he had looked 
to Edward Arundel as the future shelter of his child. The gen¬ 
erous boy had grown into a stylish young man, a soldier, whose 
duty lay far away from Marchmont Towers. No; it was to a 
good woman’s guardianship the father must leave his child. 

Thus the very intensity of his love, was the one motive which 
led John Marchmont to contemplate the step that Mary thought 
•uch a cruel and bitter wrong to her. 

It was not till long after the dinner-party at Marchmont 
Towers that these ideas resolved themselves into any positive 
form, and that John began to think that for his daughter's sake 
he might be led to contemplate a second marriage. Edward 
Arundel had spoken the truth when he told his cousin that 
John Marchmont bad repeatedly mentioned her name; but the 
careless and impulsive young man had been utterly unable to 
fathom the feeling lurking in his friend’s mind. It was not 
Olivia Arundel's handsome face which had won John’s admira- 
lion; it was the constant reiteration of her praises upon every 
side which had led him to believe that this woman, of all others, 
was the one whom he should win to be his child’s friend and 
guardian in the dark days that were to come. 

The knowledge that Olivia’s intellect was of no common 
order, together with the somewhat imperious dignity of her 
manner, strengthened this belief in John Marchinont’s mind. 
It was not a good woman oniy whom he must seek in the friend 
he needed for his child; it was a woman powerful enough to 
shield her in the lonely path she would have to tread; a woman 
strong enough to help her, perhaps, by and by, to do battle with 
Paul Marchmont. 

So, in the blind paganism of his love, John refused to trust 
his child into the hands of Providence, and chose for himself a 
friend and guardian who should shelter his darling. He made 
his choice with -so much deliberation and after such long nights 


80 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 

and days of earnest thought, that he may be forgiven if he be* 
lieved he had chosen wisely. 

Thus it was that in the dark November days, while Edward 
and Mary played chess by the wide fireplace in the western 
drawing-room, or ball in the newly-erected tennis-court, John 
Marcbmont sat in his study examining his papers, and calculat¬ 
ing the amount of money at his own disposal, in serious contem¬ 
plation of a second marriage. 

Did he love Olivia Arundel? No. He admired her and re¬ 
spected her, and he firmly believed her to be the most perfect 
of women. No impulse had prompted the step he contemplated 
taking. He had loved his first wife truly and tenderly; but he 
had never suffered very acutely from any of those torturing 
emotions which form the several stages of the great tragedy 
called Love. 

But had he ever thought of the likelihood of his deliberate 
offer being rejected by the young lady who had been the object 
of such careful consideration ? Yes; he had thought of this, 
and was prepared to abide the issue. He should, at least, have 
tried his uttermost to secure a friend for his darling. 

With such unloverlike feelings as these the owner of March- 
mont Towers drove intoSwampington one morning, deliberately 
bent upon offering Olivia Arundel his hand. He had consulted 
with his land steward, and with Messrs. Paulette, and had ascer¬ 
tained how far he could endow his bride with the goods of this 
world. It was not much that he could give her, for the estate 
was strictly entailed, but there would be his own saving*for the 
brief term of his life, and if he lived only a few years these 
savings might accumulate to a considerable amount, so limited 
were the expenses of the quiet Lincolnshire household; and 
there was a sum of money, something over nine thousand 
pounds, left him by Philip Marchmont, senior. He had some¬ 
thing, then, to offer to the woman he sought to make his wife; 
and, above all, he had a supreme belief in Olivia Arundel’s utter 
disinterestedness. He had seen her frequently since the dinner¬ 
party, and had always seen her the same—grave, reserved, dig¬ 
nified; patiently employed in the strict performance of her 
duty. 

He found Miss Arundel sitting in her father’s study, busily 
cutting out coarse garments for the poor. A newly-written 
sermon lay open on the table. Had Mr. Marchmont looked 
closely at the manuscript, he would have seen that the ink was 
wet and that the writing was Olivia’s. It was a relief to this 
strange woman to write sermons sometimes—fierce denunciatory 
protests against the inherent wickedness of the human heart. 
Can you imagine a woman with a wicked heart steadfastly try¬ 
ing to do good, and to be good ? It is a dark and horrible pict¬ 
ure, but it is the only true picture of the woman whom John 
Marchmont sought to win for his wife. 

The interview between Mary’s father and Olivia Arundel was 
not a very sentimental one, but it was certainly the very reverse 
of commonplace. John was too simple-hearted to disguise the 
purpose of bis wooing. He pleaded not for a wife for himself. 


JOHN MAUCHMONT'S LEGACY. (£l 

fcut a mother for his orphan child. He talked of Mary’s helpless¬ 
ness in the future, not of his own love in the present. Carried 
away by the egotism of his one affection, he let his motives ap¬ 
pear in all their nakedness. He spoke long and earnestly; he 
spoke until the blinding tears in his eyes made the face of her 
he looked at seem blotted and dim. 

Miss Arundel watched him as he pleaded; sternly, unflinch¬ 
ingly. But she uttered no word until he had finished; and then, 
rising suddenly, with a dusky flush upon her face, she began to 
pace up and down the narrow room. She had forgotten John 
Marchmont. In the strength and vigor of her intellect this 
weak-minded widower, whose one passion was a pitiful love for 
his child, appeared so utterly insignificant that for a few mo¬ 
ments she had forgotten his presence in that room—his very ex¬ 
istence, perhaps. She turned to him presently, and looked him 
full in the face. 

“You do not love me, Mr. Marchmont ?” she said. 

“Pardon me,” John stammered; “believe me, Miss Arundel, 
I respect, I esteem you so much, that-” 

“ That you choose me as a fitting friend for your child. I un¬ 
derstand. I am not the sort of woman to be loved. 1 have long 
comprehended that. My cousin Edward Arundel has often 
taken the trouble to tell me as much. And you wish me to be 
your wife in order that you may have a guardian for your child ? 
It is very much the same thing as engaging a governess, only the 
engagement is to be more binding.” 

“Miss Arundel,” exclaimed John Marchmont, “forgive me! 
You misunderstand me; indeed you do. Had I thought that I 
could have offended you-” 

“ I am not offended. You have spoken the truth where 
another man would have told a lie. I ought to be flattered by 
your confidence in me. It pleases me that people should think 
me good, and worthy of their trust.” 

She broke into a weary sigh as she finished speaking. 

“ And you will not reject my appeal ?” 

“ I scarcely know wbat to do,” answered Olivia, pressing her 
hand to her forehead. 

She leaned against the angle of the deep casement window, 
looking out at the bleak garden, desolate and neglected in the 
bleak winter weather. She was silent for some minutes. John 
Marchmont did not interrupt her; he was content to wait pa¬ 
tiently until she should choose to speak. 

“ Mr. Marchmont,” she said, at last, turning upon poor John 
with an abrupt vehemence that almost startled him, “I am 
three-and-twentv; and in the long, dull memory of the three- 
and-twenty years that have made my life I cannot look back 
upon one joy—no, so help me Heaven, not one!” she cried, pas¬ 
sionately, lifting l)er hand toward the low ceiling as she spoke. 
“ No prisoner in the Bastile, shut in a cell below the level of the 
Seine, and making companions of rats and spiders in his misery, 
ever led a life more hopelessly narrow, more pitifully circum¬ 
scribed, than mine has been. These grass-grown streets have 
made the boundary of my existence. The flat fenny country 


62 JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

round me is not flatter or more dismal than my life. You will 
say that I should take an interest, in the duties which I do; and 
that they should be enough for me, Heaven knows T have tried 
to do so; but my life is hard. Do you think there has been 
nothing in all this to warp my nature? Do you think, after 
hearing this, that I am the woman to be a Second mother to 
your child ?” 

She sat down as she finished speaking, and her hands dropped 
listlessly in her lap. The unquiet spirit raging in her breast had 
been stronger than herself, and had spoken. She had lifted the 
dull veil through which the outer world beheld her, and had 
shown John Marchmouther natural face, 

“I think you are a good woman, Miss Arundel,” ! e said, 
earnestly. “ If I had thought otherwise I should not have come 
here to-day. I want a good woman to be kind to my child; 
kind to her when I am dead and gone,” he added, in a lower 
voice. 

Olivia Arundel sat silent and motionless, looking straight be¬ 
fore her out into the black dullness of the garden. She was 
trying to think out the dark problem of her life. 

Strange as it may seem, there was a certain fascination for 
her in John Marchmont's offer. He offered her something, 
no matter what; it would be a change. She had compared her¬ 
self to a prisoner in the Bastile, and I think she felt very much 
as such a prisoner might have felt upon his jailer’s offering to 
remove him to Vincennes. The new prison might be worse 
than the old one, perhaps; but it w ould be different. Life at 
Marchmont Towers might be more monotonous, more desolate 
than at Swampington; but it would be a new monotony; an¬ 
other desolation. Have you nevei felt, when suffering the hide¬ 
ous throes of tooth-ache, that it would be a relief to have the 
ear-ache or the rheumatism—that variety even in torture would 
be agreeable? 

Then again, Olivia Arundel, though unblessed with many of 
the charms of womanhood, was not entirely without its weak¬ 
ness. To marry John March mont would be to avenge lierself 
upon Edward Arundel. Alas! she forgot how impossible it is 
to inflict a dagger-thrust upon him who is guarded by the im¬ 
penetrable armor of indifference. She saw herself the mistress 
of March mont Towers, waited upon by liveried servants, 
courted, not patronized, by the country gentry, avenged upon 
the mercenary aunt who had slighted her, who had bade her go 
out and get her liviug as a nursery-governess. She saw this; 
and all that was ignoble in her nature arose, and urged her to 
snatch the chance offered her—the one chance of lifting herself 
out of the horrible obscurity of her life. The ambition which 
might have made her an empress lowered its crest, and cried, 
“ Take this; at least it is something.” But through all, the bet¬ 
ter voices which she had enlisted to do battle with the natural 
voice of her soul cried, “ This is a temptation of the devil; put 
it away frorp thee!” 

But this temptation came to her at the very moment when 
her life had become most intolerable; too intolerable to be borne, 


JOHN M,\RCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


m 

she thought. She knew now, fatally, certainly, that Edward 
Arundel did not love her; that the one only day-dream she had 
ever made for herself had been a snare and a delusion. That 
one dream had been the single light of her life. That taken 
away from her, the darkness was blacker than the blackness of 
death; more horrible than the obscurity of the grave. 

In all the future she had not one hope; no, not one. She had 
loved Edward Arundel with all the strength of her soul; she 
had wasted a world of intellect and passion upon this bright¬ 
haired boy. This foolish, groveling madness had been the 
blight of her life. But for this she might have grown out of her 
natural self by force of her conscientious desire to do right, and 
might have become, indeed, a good and perfect woman. If her 
life had been a wider one, this wasted love would perhaps have 
shrunk into its proper insignificance; she would have loved, and 
suffered, and recovered, as so many of us recover from this 
foolish epidemic. But all the volcanic forces of an impetuous 
nature, concentrated into one narrow focus, wasted themselves 
upon this one feeling, until what should have been a sentiment be¬ 
came a madness. 

To think that in some far-away future time she might cease 
to love Edward Arundel, and learn to love somebody else, would 
have seemed about as reasonable to Olivia as to hope that she 
could have new legs and arms in that distant time. She could 
cut away this fatal passion with a desperate stroke, it may be, 
just as she could cut off her arm; but to believe that a new love 
would grow in its place was quite as absurd as to believe in the 
growing of a new arm. Some cork monstrosity might replace 
the amputated limb; some sham and simulated affection might 
succeed the old love. 

Olivia Arundel thought of all these things, in about ten min¬ 
utes by the little skeleton clock upon the mantel-piece, and 
while John Marchmont waited very patiently for some definite 
auswer to his appeal. Her mind came back at last, after all its 
passionate wanderings, to the rigid channel she had so labori¬ 
ously worn for it—the narrow groove of duty. Her first words 
testified this. 

“ If I accept this responsibility I will perform it faithfully,” 
she said, rather to herself than to Mr. Marchmont. 

“ I am sure you will, Miss Arundel.” John answered, eagerly; 
“I am sure you will. You mean to undertake it, then? you 
mean to consider my offer? May I speak to your father? may 
I tell him that I have spoken to'you ? may I say that you have 
given me a hope of your ultimate consent?” 

“Yes, yes,” Olivia said, rather impatiently; “speak to my 
father; tell him anything you please. Let him decide for me; 
it is my duty to obey him.” 

There was a terrible cowardice in this. Olivia Arundel shrank 
from marrying a man she did not love, prompted by no better 
desire than the mad wish to wrench herself away from her 
hated life. She wanted to fling the burden of responsibility in 
ifhis matter away from her. Let another decide; let another 


64 JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

urge her to do this wrong; and let the wrong be called a sacri¬ 
fice. 

So for the first time she set to work deliberately to cheat her 
own conscience. For the first time she put a false mark upon 
the standard she had made for the measurement of her moral 
progress. 

She sank into a crouching attitude on a low stool by the fire¬ 
place, in utter prostration of body and mind, when John March- 
mont had left her. She let her weary head fall heavily against 
the carved oaken shaft that supported the old-fashioned mantel¬ 
piece, heedless that her brow struck sharply against the corner 
of the woodwork. 

If she could have died then, with no more sinful secret than a 
woman’s natural weakness hidden in her breast—if she could 
have died then, while yet the first step upon the dark pathway 
of her life was untrodden—how happy for herself! how happy 
for others! How miserable a record of sin and suffering might 
have remained unwritten in the history of woman’s life! 
******* 

She sat long in the same attitude. Once, and once only, two 
solitary tears arose in her eyes, and rolled slowly down her pale 
cheeks. 

“ Will you be sorry when I am married, Edward Arundel?” 
she murmured; “ will you be sorry?” 


CHAPTER IX. 

“ WHEN SHALL I CEASE TO BE ALL ALONE?” 

Hubert Arundel was not so much surprised as might have 
been anticipated at the proposal made him by his wealthy 
neighbor. Edward Arundel had prepared his uncle for the pos¬ 
sibility of such a proposal by sundry jocose allusions and arch 
hints upon the subject of "John Marchmont’s admiration for 
Olivia. The frank and rather frivolous young man thought it 
was his cousin’s handsome face that had captivated the master 
of Marchmont Towers, and was quite unable to fathom the hid¬ 
den motive underlying all of John’s talk about Miss Arundel. 

The Rector of Swampington, being a simple-hearted and not 
very far-seeing man, thanked God heartily for the chance that 
had befallen his daughter. She would be well off and well 
cared for, then, by the mercy of Providence, in spite of his own 
shortcomings, which had left her with no better provision for 
the future than a pitiful policy upon her father’s life. She 
would be well provided for henceforward, and would live in a 
handsome house; and all those noble qualities which had been 
dwarfed and crippled in a narrow sphere would now expand, 
and display themselves in unlooked-for grandeur. 

“ People have called her a good girl,” he thought; “ but how 
could they ever know her goodness, unless they had seen, as I 
have, the horrible deprivations she has borne so uncomplain¬ 
ingly ?” 

John Marchmont, being newly instructed by his lawyer, was 
able to give Mr. Arundel a very clear statement of the provision 



65 


JOHN MARCHMONT'8 LEGACY. 

he could make for his wife’s future. He could settle upon her 
the nine thousand pounds left him by Philip Marchmont. He 
vvould allow her five hundred a year pin-money during his life¬ 
time; he would leave her his savings at his death; and he would 
effect an insurance upon his life for her benefit. The amount 
of these savings would, of course, depend upon the length of 
John's life; but the money would accumulate very quickly, as 
his income was eleven thousand a year, and his expenditure was 
not likely to exceed three. 

TheSwampington living was worth little more than three hun¬ 
dred and fifty pounds a year; and out of that sum Hubert Arun¬ 
del and his daughter had done treble as much good for the nu¬ 
merous poor of the parish as ever had been achieved by any pre¬ 
vious rector or his family. Hubert and his daughter had pa¬ 
tiently endured the most grinding poverty, the burden ever fall¬ 
ing heavier on Olivia, who had the heroic faculty of endurance as 
regards all physical discomfort. Can it be wondered, then, that 
the Rector of Swampington thought the prospect offered to his 
child a very brilliant one ? Can it be wondered that he urged 
his daughter to accept this altered lot? 

He did urge her, pleading John Marchmont’s cause a great deal 
more warmly than the widower had himself pleaded. 

“ My darling,” he said, “ my darling girl! if I can live to see 
you mistress of Marchmont Towers, I shall go to my grave con¬ 
tented and happy. Think, my dear, of the misery this marriage 
will save you from. Oh, my dear girl, I can tell you now what 
I never dared tell you before; I can tell you of the long, sleep¬ 
less nights 1 have passed thinking of you. and the wick, d 
wrongs I have done you. Not willful wrongs, my love,” the 
rector added, with tears gathering in his eyes; “ for you know 
how dearly I have always loved you. But a father’s responsi¬ 
bility toward his children is a very heavy burden. I’ve only 
looked at it in this light lately, my dear—now that I’ve let the 
time slip by, and it is too late to redeem the past. I’ve suffered 
very much, Olivia; and all this has seemed to separate us, some¬ 
how. But that’s past now, isn’t it, my dear ? and you’ll marry 
this Mr. Marchmont. He seems to be a very good, conscientious 
man. and I think he’ll make you happy.” 

The father and daughter were sitting together after dinner in 
the dusky November twilight, the room only lighted by the fire, 
which was low and dim. Hubert Arundel could not see his 
daughters face as he talked to her; he could only see the black 
outline of her figure sharply defined against the gray window 
behind her, as she sat opposite to him. He could see by 
her attitude that she was listening to him, \ ith her head droop¬ 
ing and her hands lying idly in her lap. 

She was silent for some little time after he had finished speak¬ 
ing; so silent that he feared his words might have touched her 
too painfully, and that she was crying. 

Heaven help this simple-hearted father! She bad scarcely 
heard three consecutive words that he had spoken, but had only 
gathered dimly from his speech that he wanted her to accept 
John Marchmont’s offer. 


66 


JOHN MARCHMONT'8 LEGACY. 


Every great passion is a supreme egotism. It is not the object 
which we hug so determinedly; it is not the object which coils 
itself about our weak hearts: it is our own madness we worship 
and cleave to, our own pitiable folly which we refuse to put away 
from us. What is Bill Sykes’ broken nose or bull-dog visage to 
Nancy ? The creature she loves and will not part with is not 
Bill, but her own love for Bill—the one delusion of a barren life, 
the one grand selfishness of a feeble nature. 

Olivia Arundel’s thoughts had wandered far away while her 
father had spoken so piteously to her. She had been thinking 
of her cousin Edward, and had been asking herself the same 
question over and over again. Would he be sorry ? would he be 
sorry if she married John Marchmont? 

But she understood presently that her father was waiting for 
her to speak; and rising from her chair, she went toward him, 
and laid her haud upon his shoulder. 

“Iam afraid I have not done my duty to you, papa,” she 
said. 

Latterly she had been forever harping upon this one theme— 
her duty! That word was the key-note of her life; and her ex¬ 
istence had latterly seemed to her so inharmonious that it was 
scarcely strange she should repeatedly strike that leading note 
in the scale. 

“ My darling,” cried Mr. Arundel, “you have been all that is 
good.” 

“ No, no, papa; I have been cold, reserved, silent.” 

“ A little silent, my dear,” the rector answered, meekly; “ but 
you have not been happy. I have watched you, my love, and I 
know you have not been happy. But that is not strange. This 
place is so dull, and your life has been so fatiguing. How dif¬ 
ferent that would all be at Marchmont Towers!” 

“ You wish me to marry Mr. Marchmont, then, papa?” 

“ I do, indeed, my love. For your own sake, of course,” the 
rector added, deprecatingly. 

“ You really wish it ?” 

“ Very, very much, my dear.” 

, “ Then I will marry him, papa.” 

She took her hand from the rector’s shoulder, and walked 
away from him to the uncurtained window, against which she 
stood with her back to her father, looking out into the gray ob¬ 
scurity* 

I have said that Hubert Arundel was not a very clever or 
far-seeing person; but he vaguely felt that this was not exactly 
the way in which a brilliant offer of marriage should be ac¬ 
cepted by a young lady who was entirely fancy-free, and he had 
an uncomfortable apprehension that there was something hidden 
under his daughters quiet manner. 

“But, my dear Olivia,” he said, nervously, “you must not for 
a moment suppose that I would force you into this marriage if 
it is in any way repugnant to yourself. You—j r ou may have 
formed some prior attachment, or there may be somebody who 
loves you, and has loved you longer than Mr. Marchmont, 
who- 


JOHN MaMC&MONT'S LEGACY. ffi 

His daughter turned upon him sharply as he rambled on. 

“Somebody who loves me!” she echoed. “What have you 
ever seen that should make you think any one loved me ?” 

The harshness of her tone jarred upon Mr. Arundel, and made 
him still more nervous. 

“ My love, I beg your pardon. I have seen nothing. I-” 

“Nobody loves me, or ever has loved me—but you,” resumed 
Olivia, taking no heed of her father’s feeble interruption. “I 
am not the sort of woman to be loved; I feel and know that. 
I have an aquiline nose, and a clear skin, aud dark eyes, and 
people call me handsome; but nobody loves me or ever will, so 
long as I live.” 

“But Mr. Marchmont, my dear—surely he loves and admires 
you ?” remonstrated the rector. % 

“ Mr. Marchmont wants a governess and chaperon for his 
daughter, and thinks me a suitable person to fill such a post; 
that is all the love Mr. Marchmont has for me. No. papa, there 
is no reason I should shrink from this marriage. There is no 
one who will be sorry for it—no one. I am asked to perform a 
duty toward this little girl, and I am prepared to perform it 
faithfully. That is my part of the bargain. Do I commit a sin 
in marrying John Marchmont in this spirit, papa?” 

She asked the question eagerly, almost breathlessly, as if her 
decisiou depended on her father’s answer. 

“ A sin, my dear! How can you ask such a question ?” 

“ Very well, then; if I commit uo sin in accepting this offer, 
I will accept it.” 

It was thus Olivia paltered with her conscience, holding back 
half the truth. The question she should have asked was this: 
“ Do I commit a sin in marrying one man while my heart is 
filled with a mad and foolish iove for another ?” 

Miss Arundel could not visit her poor upon the day after this 
interview with her father. Her monotonous round of duty 
seemed more than ever abhorrent to her. She wandered across 
the dreary marshes, down by the lonely sea-shore, in the gray 
November fog. 

She stood for a long time shivering with the cold dampness 
of the atmosphere, but not even conscious that she was cold, 
looking at a dilapidated boat that lay upon the rugged beach. 
The waters before her and the land behind her were hidden by 
a dense veil of mist. It seemed as if she stood alone in the world 
—utterly isolated, utterly forgotten. 

“Oh, my God!” she murmured; “if this boat at my feet 
could drift me away to some desert island, I could never be 
more desolate than I am among the people whodonot leve me.” 

Dim lights in distant windows were gleaming across the flats 
when she returned to Swampington, to find her father sitting 
alone and dispirited at his frugal dinner. Miss Arundel took her 
place quietly at the bottom of the table, with no trace of emotion 
upon her face. 

“ I am sorry I stayed out so long, papa,” she said; “ I had no 
idea it was so late.” 

“ Never mind, my dear. I know you have always enough to 


68 JOHN MARCH MO NT *8 LEGACY. 

occupy you. Mr. Marchruont called while you were out. He 
seemed very anxious to hear your decision, and was delighted 
when he found that it was favorable to himself. 

Olivia dropped her knife and fork, and rose from her chair 
suddenly, with a strange look, which was almost terror, in her 
face. 

“ Is it quite decided, then ?” she said. 

“ Yes, my love. But you are not sorry, are you?” 

“Sorry! No; I am glad.” 

She sank back into her chair with a sigh of relief. She was 
glad. The prospect of this strange marriage offered a relief from 
the horrible oppression of her life. / 

“ Henceforward to think of Edward Arundel will be a sin, 
she thought. “I have not won another man’s love, but I shall 
be another man’s wife.” 


CHAPTER X. 

MARY’S STEP-MOTHER. 

Perhaps there was never a quieter courtship than that which 
followed Olivia’s acceptance of John Marchmont’s offer. There 
had been no pretense of seutiment on either side; yet I doubt if 
John had been much more sentimental during his early love-mak¬ 
ing days, though he had very tenderly and truly loved his first 
wife. There were few sparks of the romantic or emotional fire 
in his placid nature. His love for his daughter, though it ab¬ 
sorbed his whole being, was a silent and undemonstrative affec¬ 
tion; a thoughtful and almost fearful devotion, which took the 
form of intense but hidden anxiety for his child’s future rather 
than any outward show of tenderness. 

Had his love been of a more impulsive and demonstrative 
character, he would scarcely have ihought of taking such a step 
as that he now contemplated, without first ascertaining whether 
it was agreeable to his daughter. 

But he never for a moment dreamed of consulting Mary’s will 
upon this important matter. He looked with fearful glances 
toward the dim future, and saw his darling, a lonely figure upon 
a barren landscape, beset with enemies eager to devour her; 
and he snatched at this one chance of securing a protectress, 
who would be bound to her by a legal as well as a moral tie; for 
John Marchmont meant to appoint his second wife the guardian 
of his child. He thought only of this; and he hurried on his 
suit at the Rectory, fearful lest death should come between him 
and his loveless bride, and thus deprive his darling of a second 
mother. 

This was the history of John Marchmont’s second marriage. 
It was not till a week before the day appointed for the wedding 
that he told his daughter what he was about to do. Edward 
Arundel knew the secret, but he had been warned not to reveal 
it to Mary. 

The father and daughter sat together late one evening in the 
first week of December, in the great western drawing-room. 



JOHN MA RCHMONT*S LEGACY. 


69 


Edward had gone to a party at Swampington, and was to sleep 
at the Rectory; so Mary and her father were alone. 

It was nearly eleven Vclock; but Miss Marchmont had insisted 
upon sitting up until her father should retire to rest. She had 
always sat up in Oakley Street, she had remonstrated, though 
she was much younger then. She sat on a velvet-covered has¬ 
sock at her father’s feet, with her fair hair falling over his-knee, 
as her head lay there in loving abandonment. She was not talk¬ 
ing to him; for neither John nor Mary were great talkers; but 
she was with him—that was quite enough. 

Mr. Marchmont’s thin fingers twined themselves listlessly in 
and out of the fair curls upon his knee. Mary was thinking of 
Edward and the party at Swampington. Would he enjoy him¬ 
self very, very much? Would he be sorry that she was not 
there ? It was a grown-up party, and she wasn’t old enough for 
grown-up parties yet. Would the pretty girls in blue be there? 
and would he dance with them ? 

Her father’s face was clouded by a troubled expression, as he 
looked absently at the red embers in the low fireplace. He 
6poke presently, but his observation was a very commonplace 
one. The opening speeches of a tragedy are seldom remarkable 
for any ominous or solemn meaning. Two gentlemen meet each 
other in a street very near the footlights, and converse rather 
flippantly about the aspect of affairs in general; there is no bint 
of bloodshed and agony till we get deeper into the play. 

So Mr. Marchmont, bent upon making rather rn important 
communication to his daughter, and for the first time feeling 
very fearful as to how she would take it, began thus: 

“ You really ought to go to bed earlier, Polly dear; you’ve 
been looking very pale lately, and I know such hours as these 
must be bad for you.” 

“Oh, no, papa dear,” cried the young lady; “I’m always pale; 
that’s natural to me. Sitting up late doesn’t hurt me, papa. It 
never did in Oakley Street, you know.” 

John Marchmont shook his head sadly. 

“I don’t know that,” he said. “My darling had to suffer 
many evils through her father’s poverty. If you had some one 
who loved you, dear, a lady, you know—for a man does not 
understand these sort of things—your health would be looked 
after more carefully, and—and—your education—and—in short, 
you would be altogether happier; wouldn’t you, Polly darling?” 

He asked the question in an almost piteously appealing tone. 
A terrible fear was beginning to take possession of him. His 
daughter might be grieved at this second marriage. The very 
step which he had taken for her happiness might cause her lov¬ 
ing nature pain and sorrow. In the utter cowardice of his affec¬ 
tion he trembled at the thought of causing his darling any dis¬ 
tress in the present, even for her future welfare, even for her 
future good, and he knew that the step he was about to take 
would secure that. Mary started from her reclining position, 
and looked up into her father’s face. 

“You’re not going to engage a governess for me, papa.'' 
rJje cried, eagerly. “ Oh, please, don’t. We are so much bet- 


JOHN MARCBMONT'S LEGACY. 


?0 

ter as it is. A governess would keep me away from you, 
papa; I know she would. The Miss Landeils, at Impley 
Grange, have a governess; and they only come down to dessert 
for half an hour, or go out for a drive sometimes, so that they 
very seldom see their papa. Lucy told me so; and they said 
they’d give the world to be always with their papa, as I am 
with you. Oh, pray, pray, papa darling, don’t let me have a 
governess.” 

The tears were in her eyes as she pleaded to him. The sight 
of those tears made him terribly nervous. 

“ My own dear Polly,” he said, “ I’m not going to engage a 
governess. I—Polly, Polly dear, you must be reasonable. 
You mustn’t grieve your poor father. You are old enough to 
understand these things now, dear. You know what the doc¬ 
tors have said. I may die, Polly, and leave you alone in the 
world.” 

She clung closely to her father, and looked up, pale and trem¬ 
bling, as she answered him. 

“ When you die, papa, I shall die too. I could never, never 
live without you!” 

“ Yes, } T es, my darling, you would. You will live to lead a 
happy life, please God, and a safe one: but if I die, and leave 
you very young, very inexperienced, and innocent, as I may do, 
my dear, you must not be without a friend to watch over you, 
to advise, to protect you. I have thought of this long and 
earnestly, Polly; and I believe that what I am going to do is 
right.” 

“What you are going to do!” Mary cried, repeating her 
father s words, and looking at him in sudden terror. “ What do 
you mean, papa? What are you going to do? Nothing that 
will part us! Oh papa, papa, you will never do anything to 
part us ?” 

“ No, Polly darling.” answered Mr. Marchmont. “ Whatever 
I do I do for your sake, and for that alone, I’m going to be 
married, my dear.” 

Mary burst into a low wail, more pitiful than any ordinary 
weeping. 

“ Oh papa, papa,” she cried, “ you never will, you never will!’’ 

The sound of that piteous voice for a few moments quite un¬ 
manned John Marchmont; but he armed himself with a despe¬ 
rate courage. He determined not to be influenced by this child 
to relinquish the purpose which he believed was to achieve her 
future welfare. 

** Mary, Mary dear.” he said, reproachfully, “ this is very cruel 
of you. Do you think I haven’t consulted your happiness before 
my own? Do you think I shall love you less because I take this 
step for your sake? You are very cruel to me, Mary.” 

The little girl rose from her kneeling attitude, and stood 
before her father, with the tears streaming down her white 
cheeks, but with a certain air of resolution about her. She had 
been a child for a few moments; a child, with no power to look 
beyond the sudden pang of that new sorrow which had come to 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


71 


her. She was a woman now, able to rise superior to her sorrow 
in the strength of her womanhood. 

“ I won’t be cruel, papa,’* she said: “ I was selfish and 
wicked to talk like that. If it will make you happy to have an¬ 
other wife, papa, I’ll not be sorry. No, I won’t be sorry, even 
if your new wife separates us—a little.” 

“But, my darling,” John remonstrated, “I don’t mean that 
she should separate us at all. I wish you to have a second 
friend, Polly; some one who can understand you better than I 
do, who may love you perhaps almost as well.” Mary March¬ 
mont shook her head; she could not realize this possibility. 
“Do you understand me, my dear?” her father continued, 
earnestly. “ I want you to have some one who will be a mother 
to you; and J hope—I am sure that Olivia-” 

Mar} r interrupted him by a sudden exclamation, that was al¬ 
most like a cry of pain. 

“Not Miss Arundel!” she said. “ Ob, papa, it is not Miss 
Arundel you are going to marry ?” 

Her father bent his head in assent. 

“What is the matter with you, Mary?” he said, almost fret¬ 
fully. as he saw the look of mingled grief and terror in his 
daughter’s face. “You are really quite unreasonable to-night. 
If I am to marrv at all. who should I choose for a wife? Who 
could be better than Olivia Arundel ? Everybody knows how 
good she is. Everybody talks of her goodness.” 

In these two sentences Mr. Marchmont made confession of a 
fact he had never himself considered. It was not his own im¬ 
pulse, it was no instinctive belief in her goodness, that had led 
him to choose Olivia Arundel for his wife. He bad been in¬ 
fluenced solely by the reiterated opinions of other people. 

“I know she is very good, papa,” Mary cried; “but oh, why, 
why do you marry her ? Do you love her so very, very much ?” 

“Love her!” exclaimed Mr. Marchmont, naively; “no, Polly 
dear; you know I never loved any one but you.” 

“ Why do you marry her, then?” 

“ For vour sake, Polly; for your sake.” 

“But "don’t, then, papa: oh pray, pray don’t. I don’t want 
her. I don’t like her. I could never be happy with her.” 

“Mary! Mary!” 

“ Yes, I know it’s very wicked to say so, but it s true, papa; 1 
never, never, never could be happy with her. I know she is 
good, but I don’t like her. If I did anything wrong, I should 
never expect her to forgive me for it; I should never expect her 
to have mercy upon me. Don’t marry her, papa; pray, pray 

don’t marry her.” . 

“ Mary,” said Mr. Marchmont, resolutely, “ this is very wrong 
of you. I have given my word, my dear, and I cannot recall it. 
I believe that I am acting for the best. You must not be child¬ 
ish now, Mary. You have been my comfort ever since you were 
a baby; you mustn’t make me unhappy now.” ■ 

Her father’s appeal went straight to her heart. Yes, she had 
been his help and comfort since her earliest infancy, and she 
was not unused to self-sacrifice; why should she fail bjQ} 


75 


JOHN MARCBMONT'S LEGACY. 


now? She had read of martyrs, patient and holy creatures, 
to whom suffering was glory; she would be a martyr, if need 
were, for his sake. She would stand steadfast amidst the 
blazing fagots, or walk unflinchingly across the white-hot plow¬ 
share? for his sake, for his sake. 

“Papa, papa,” she cried, flinging herself upon her father’s 
neck, “ I will not make you sorry. I will be good and obedient 
to Miss Arundel, if you wish it.” 

Mr. Marchmont carried his little girl up to her comfortable 
bedchamber close at hand to his own. She was very calm 
when she bade him good-night, and she kissed him with a smile 
upon her face; but all through the long hours before the late 
winter morning Mary Marchmont lay awake, weeping silently 
and incessantly in her new sorrow; and all through the same 
weary hours the master of that noble Lincolnshire mansion 
slept a fitful and troubled slumber, rendered hideous by con¬ 
fused and horrible dreams, in which the black shadow that 
came between him and his child, and the cruel hand that thrust 
him forever from his darling, were Olivia Arundel’s. 

But the morning light brought relief to John Marchmont and 
his child. Mary arose with the determination to submit pa¬ 
tiently to her father’s choice, and to conceal from him all traces 
of her foolish and unreasoning sorrow. John awoke from 
troubled dreams to believe in the wisdom of the step he had 
taken, and to take comfort from the thought that in the far¬ 
away future his daughter would have reason to thauk and bless 
him for the choice lie had made. 

So the few days before the marriage passed away—miserably 
short days, that flitted by with terrible speed; and the last day 
of all was made still more dismal by the departure of Edward 
Arundel, who left Marchmont Tow ers to go to Dangerfield Park, 
whence he was most likely to start once more for India. 

Mary felt that her narrow world of love was indeed crumbling 
aw^ay from her. Edw^ard was lost, and to-morrow her father 
would belong to another. Mr. Marchmont dined at the Rectory 
upon that last evening; for there were settlements to be signed 
and other matters to be arranged; and Mary was alone—quite 
alo e—weeping over her lost happiness. 

“This w’ould never have happened,” she thought, “if we 
hadn’t come to Marchmont Towers. I wish papa had never had 
the fortune; we were so happy in Oakley Street—so very happy. 

1 wouldn’t mind a bit being poor again if I could be always with 
papa.” 

Mr. Marchmont had not been able to make himself quite com¬ 
fortable in his mind, after that unpleasant interview’ with his 
daughter in which he had broken to her the news of his ap¬ 
proaching marriage. Argue with himself as he might upon the 
advisability of the step he was about to take, he could not argue 
away the fact that he had grieved the child he loved so in¬ 
tensely. He could not blot aw’ay from his memory the pitiful 
aspect of her terror-stricken face as she had turned it toward 
him when he uttered the name of Olivia Arundel. 

No; he had grieved and distressed her. The future might 


JOHN MARCHMONT LEGACY. 


T4 


reconcile her to that grief, perhaps, as a by-gone sorrow which 
she had been allowed to suffer for her own ultimate advantage. 
But the future was a long way off; and in the meantime there 
was Mary’s altered face, calm and resigned, but bearing upon it 
a settled look of sorrow, very close at hand; and John March- 
mont could not be otherwise'than uuhappy in the knowledge of 
his darling’s grief. 

I do not believe that any man or woman is ever suffered to 
take any fatal step upon the roadway of life without receiving 
ample warning by the way. The stumbling-blocks are placed 
in the fatal path by a merciful hand; but we insist upon groping 
over them, and surmounting them in our blind obstinacy, to 
reach that sbadowv something beyond, which we have in our 
ignorance appointed to be our goal. A thousand ominous whis¬ 
pers in his own breast warned John Marchmont that the step he 
considered so wise was not a wise one; and yet, in spite of all 
these subtle warnings, in spite of the ever-present reproach of 
his daughter’s altered face, this man, who was too weak to trust 
blindly in his God, went on persistently upon his way, trusting, 
with a thousand times more fatal blindness, in his own wisdom. 

He could not be content to confide his darling and her altered 
fortunes to the Providence which had watched over her in her 
poverty, and sheltered her from every harm. He could not 
trust his child to the mercy of God, but he cast her upon the 
love of Olivia Arundel. 

A new life began for Mary Marchmont after the quiet wedding 
at Swampington Church. The bride and bridegroom went upon 
a brief honeymoon excursion far away among snow-clad 
Scottish mountains and frozen streams, upon whose bloomless 
margins poor John shivered dismally. I fear that Mr. March¬ 
mont, having been, by the hard pressure of poverty, compelled 
to lead a cockney life for the better half of his existence, had 
but slight relish for the grand and sublime in nature. I do not 
think he looked at the ruined walls which had once sheltered 
Macbeth and his strong-minded partner with all the enthusiasm 
which might have been expected of him. He had but one idea 
about Macbeth, and he was rather glad to get out of the neigh¬ 
borhood associated with the warlike thane; for his memories ot 
the past presented King Duncan’s murderer as a very stern and 
uncompromising gentleman, who was utterly intolerant of ban¬ 
ners held awrv, or turned with the blank and ignoble side 
toward the audience, and who objected vehemently to a violent 
fit of coughing on the part of any one of his guests during the 
blank Barmecide feast of pasteboard and Dutch metal with 
which he was wont to entertain them. No; John Marchmont 
had had quite enough of Macbeth, and rather wondered at the 
hot enthusiasm of other red-nosed tourists, apparently mdifiei- 
ent to the frosty weather. 

I fear that the master of Marchmont Towers would have pre¬ 
ferred Oakley Street, Lambeth, to Princes Street, Edinburgh; 
for the nipping and eager airs of the Modern Athens nearly blew 
him across the gulf between the new town and the old. A visit 
to the Calton Hill produced an attack of that chronic cough 


JOHN MA no I I'M 0 NT'S LEGACY. 


14 

which liad so severel} tormented the weak-kneed supernumerary 
in the draughty corridors of Drury Lane. Montrose and Ab¬ 
botsford fatigued this poor feeble tourist: he tried to be interested 
in the stereotyped round of associations beloved by other travel¬ 
ers, but he had a weary craving for rest, which was stronger 
than any hero worship; and he discovered, before long, that he 
had done a very foolish thing in CQmiug to Scotland in Decem¬ 
ber and January, without having consulted his physician as to 
the propriety of such a step. 

But above all personal inconvenience, above all personal suf¬ 
fering, there was one feeling ever present in his heart—a sick 
yearning for the little girl he had left behind him, a mournful 
longing to be back with his child. Already Mary’s sad forebod¬ 
ings had been in some way realized; already his new wife had 
separated him, unintention lly of course, from his daughter. 
The aches 'and pains he endured in the bleak Scottish atmos¬ 
phere reminded him only too forcibly of the warnings he had 
received from his physicians. He was seized with a panic al¬ 
most when he remembered his own imprudence. What if he 
had needlessly curtailed the short span of his life! What if he 
were to die soon, before Olivia had learned to love her step¬ 
daughter; before Mary had grown affectionately familiar with 
her new guardian ? Again and again he appealed to bis wife, 
imploring her to be tender to the orphan child if he should be 
snatched away suddenly. 

“I know you will love her by and by, Olivia,” he said; “as 
much as I do, perhaps; for you will discover how good she is, 
how patient and unselfish. But just at first, and before you 
know her very well, you will be kind to her, won’t you Olivia ? 
She has been used to great indulgence; she has been spoiled, 
perhaps; but you will remember all that, and be very kind to 
her.” 

“ I will try and do my duty,” Mrs. Marchmont answered. “ I 
pray that I never may do less.” 

There was no tender yearning in Olivia Marchmont’s heart 
toward the motherless girl. She herself felt that such a feeling 
was wanting, and comprehended that it should have been there. 
She would have loved her step-daughter in those early days if 
she could have done so; but she could not —she could not. All 
that was tender or womanly in her nature had been wasted upon 
her hopeless love for Edward Arundel. The utter wreck of that 
small freight of affection had left her nature warped and 
stunted, soured, disappointed, unwomanly. 

How was she to love this child, this fair-haired, dove-eyed 
girl, before whom woman’s life, with all its natural wealth of 
affection, stretched far away, a bright and fairy vista? How 
was she to love her— she, whose black future was uncheckered 
by one ray of light; who stood dissevered from the past, alone 
in the dismal, dreamless monotony of the present? 

“No,” she thought; “beggars and princes can never love 
each other. When this girl and I are equals—when she, like 
me, stands alone upon a barren rock, far out amidst the waste 
of waters, with not one memory to hold her to the past, with 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


75 


not one hope to lure her onward to the future, with nothing but 
the black sky above and the black waters around —then we may 
grow fond of each other.” 

But always more or less steadfast to the standard she had set 
up for herself, Olivia Marchmont intended to do her duty to her 
step-daughter. She had not failed in other duties, though no 
glimmer of love had brightened them, no natural affection had 
made them pleasant. Why should she fail in this? 

If this belief in her own power should appear to be somewhat 
arrogant, let it be remembered that she had set herself hard 
tasks before now, and had performed them. Would the new 
furnace through which she was to pass be more terrible than 
the old fires? She had gone to God’s altar with a man for 
whom she had no more love than she felt for the lowest or most 
insignificant of the miserable sinners in her father's flock. She 
had sworn to honor and obey him, meaning at least faithfully 
to perform that portion of her vow; and on the nig lit before her 
loveless bridal she had groveled—white, writhing, mad, and 
desperate—upon the ground, and had plucked out of her lacer¬ 
ated heart her hopeless love for another man. 

Yes, she had done this. Another woman might have spent 
that bridal eve in vain tears and lamentations, in feeble prayers, 
and such weak struggles as might have been evidenced by the 
destruction of a few letters, a tress of hair, some fragile foolish 
tokens of a wasted love. She would have burned five out of six 
letters, perhaps—that helpless, ordinary sinner—and would have 
kept the sixth, to hoard away hidden among her matrimonial 
truosseau; she would have thrown away fifteenth-sixteenths of 
that tress of hair, and would have kept the sixteenth portion— 
one delicate curl of gold, slender as the thread by which her 
shattered hopes had hung—to be wept over and kissed in the 
days that were to come. An ordinary woman would have 
fast and loose with love and duty, and so would have 



been true to neither. 

But Olivia Arundel did none of these things. She battled 
with her weakness as St. George battled with the fiery dragon. 
She plucked the rooted serpent from her heart, reckless as to 
how much of that desperate heart was to be wrenched away 
with its roots. A cowardly woman would have killed herself, 
perhaps, rather than endure this mortal agony. Olivia Arundel 
killed more than herself; she killed the passion that had become 
stronger than herself. 

“Alone she did it;” unaided by any human sympathy or 
compassion, unsupported by any human counsel, not upheld by 
her God; for the religion she had made for herself was a hard 
creed, and the many words of tender comfort which must have 
been familiar to her were unremembered in that long night of 
anguish. 

It was the Roman’s stern endurance, rather than the meek 
faithfulness of the Christum, which upheld this unhappy girl 
under her torture. She did not do this thing because it pleased 
her to be obedient to her God. She did not do it because she 
believed in the mercy of Him who inflicted the suffering, and 


JOHN MARCTTMONT'S LEGACt. 


% 

looked forward hopefully, even amidst her passionate grief, to 
the day when she should better comprehend that which she now 
saw so darkly. No; she fought the terrible fight, and she came 
forth out of it a conqueror, by reason of her own indomitable 
power of suffering, by reason of her own extraordinary strength 
of will. 

But she did conquer. If her weapon was the classic sword 
and not the Christian cross, she was nevertheless a conqueror. 
When she stood before the altar and gave her hand to John 
Marchmont, Edward Arundel was dead to her. The fatal habit 
of looking at him as the one center of her narrow life was cured. 
In all her Scottish wanderings her thoughts never once went 
back to him; though a hundred chance words and associations 
tempted her, though a thousand memories assailed her, though 
some trick of bis face in the faces of other people, though some 
tone of his voice in the voices of others perpetually offered to 
entrap her. No; she was steadfast. 

Dutiful as a wife as she had been dutiful as a daughter, she 
bore with her husband when his feeble health made him a weari¬ 
some companion. She waited upon him when pain made him 
fretful, and her duties became lit tie less arduous than those of a 
hospital-nurse. When at the bidding of a Scotch physician who 
had been called in at Edinburgh, John Marchmont turned home¬ 
ward, traveling slowly and resting often on the way, his wife 
was more devoted to him than his experienced servant, more 
watchful than the best trained sick-nurse. She recoiled from 
nothing, she neglected nothing; she gave him full measure of 
the honor and obedience which she had promised upon her wed¬ 
ding-day. And when she reached Marchmont Towers upon a 
dreary evening in January, she passed beneath the solemn portal 
of the western front, carrying in her heart the full determina¬ 
tion to hold as steadfastly to thp other half of her bargain, and 
to do her duty to her step-child. 

Mary ran out of the western drawing-room to welcome her 
father and his wife. She had cast off her black drosses in honor 
of Mr. Marchmont’s marriage, and she wore some soft, silken 
fabric, of a pale shimmering blue, which contrasted exquisitely 
with her soft flaxen hair and her fair tender face. She uttered 
a cry of mingled alarm and sorrow when she saw her father and 
perceived the change that had been made in his looks by the 
northern journey; but she checked herself at a warning glance 
from her step mother,and bade that dear father welcome, cling¬ 
ing about him with an almost desperate fondness. She greeted 
Olivia gently and respectfully. 

“I will try to be very good, mamma,” she said, as she took 
the passive hand of the lady who had come to rule at March¬ 
mont Towers. 

“ I believe you will, my dear,” Olivia answered, kindly. 

She had been startled a little as Mary addressed her by that 
endearing corruption of the holy word mother. The child had 
been so long motherless, that she felt little of that acute anguish 
which some orphans suffer when they have to look up in a 
strange face and say “mamma.” She had taught herself the 


77 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

lesson of resignation, and she was prepared to accept this 
stranger as her new mother, and to look up to her and obey her 
henceforward. No thought of her future position as sole owner 
of Marchmont Towers ever crossed her mind, womanly as that 
mind had become in the sharp experiences of poverty. If her 
father had told her that he had cut off the entail, and settled 
Marchmont Towers upon his new wife, I think she would have 
submitted meekly to his will, and would have seen no injustice 
in the act. She loved him blindly and confidingly. Indeed, 
she could only love after one fashion. The organ of veneration 
must have been abnormally developed in Mary Marchmont’s 
head. To believe that any one she loved was otherwise than 
perfect, would have been, in her creed, an infidelity against 
love. Had any one told her that Edward Arundel was not emi¬ 
nently qualified for the post of general-in-chief of the Army of 
the Indus; or that her father could by any possible chance be 
guilty of a fault or folly, she would have recoiled in horror from 
the treasonous slanderer. 

A dangerous quality, perhaps, this quality of guilelessness 
which rhinketh no evil, which cannot be induced to see the evil 
under its very nose. But surely, of all the beautiful and pure 
things upon this earth, such blind confidence is the purest anti 
most beautiful. I knew a lady, dead and gone—alas for this 
world, which could ill afford to lose so good a Christian—who 
carried this trustfulness of spirit, this utter incapacity to believe 
in wrong, through all the strife and turmoil of a troubled life, 
unsullied and unlessened, to her grave. She was cheated and 
imposed upon, robbed and lied to by people who loved her, per¬ 
haps, while they wronged her—for to know her was to love her. 
She was robbed systematically by a confidential servant for 
years, and for years refused to believe those who told her of his 
delinquencies. She could not believe that people were wicked. 
To the day of her death she had faith in the scoundrels and 
scamps who had profited by her sweet compassion and untiring 
benevolence; and indignantly defended them against those who 
dared to say that they were anything more than unfortunate. 
To go to her was to go to a never-failing fountain of love and 
tenderness. To know her goodness was to understand the good¬ 
ness of God; for her love approached the Infinite, and might 
have taught a skeptic the possibility of Divinity. Threescore 
years and ten of worldly experience left her an accomplished 
lady, a delightful companion, but iu guilelessness a child. 

So Mary Marchmont, trusting implicitly in those she loved, 
submitted to her father’s will, and prepared to obey her step¬ 
mother. The new life at the Towers began very peacefully; a 
perfect harmony reigned in the quiet household. Olivia took 
the reins of management with so little parade that the old 
housekeeper who had long been paramount in the Lincolnshire 
mansion, found herself superseded before she knew where she 
was. It was Olivia’s nature, to govern. Her strength of will 
asserted itself almost unconsciously. She took possession of 
Mary Marchmont as she had taken possession of her school - 
children at Swampington, making her own laws for the govern- 




78 


JOHN MAUCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

meat of their narrow intellects. She planned a routine of study 
that was actually terrible to the little girl, whose education had 
hitherto been conducted in a somewhat slipslop manner by a 
weakly-indulgent father. She came between Mary and her one 
amusement—the reading of novels. The half-bound romances 
were snatched ruthlessly from this young devourer of light lit¬ 
erature, and sent back to the shabby circulating library at 
Swampington. Even the gloomy old oak book-cases in the 
library at-the Towers, and the Abbotsford edition of the Waverley 
novels were forbidden to poor Mary; for though Sir Walter 
Scott’s morality is irreproachable, it will not do fora young lady 
to be weeping over Lucy Ashton or Amy Robsart when she 
should be consulting her terrestrial globe, and informing herself 
as to the latitude and longitude of the Fiji Islands. 

So a round of dry and dreary lessons began for poor Miss 
Marchmont. and her brain grew almost dazed under that con¬ 
tinuous and pelting shower of hard facts which many worthy 
people consider the one sovereign method of education. I have 
said that her mind was far in advance of her years; Olivia per¬ 
ceived this, and set her tasks in advance of her mind, in order 
that the perfection attained by a sort of steeple-chase of instruc¬ 
tion might not be lost to her/ If Mary learned difficult lessons 
with surprising rapidity, Mrs. Marchmont plied her with even 
yet more difficult lessons, thus keeping the spur perpetually in 
the side of this heavily-weighted racer on the road to learning. 
But it must not be thought that Olivia willfully tormented or 
oppressed her step-daughter. It was not so. In all this, John 
Marchmont’? second wife implicitly believed that she was doing 
her duty to the child committed to her care. She fully be¬ 
lieved that this dreary routine of education was wise and right, 
and would be for Mary’s ultimate advantage. If she caused 
Miss Marchmont to get up at abnormal hours on bleak wintery 
mornings, for the purpose of wrestling with a difficult variation 
by Hertz or Schubert, she herself rose also and sat shivering by 
the piano, counting the time of the music which her step¬ 
daughter played. 

Whatever pains and trouble she inflicted on Mary she most 
unshrinkingly endured herself. She waded through the dismal 
slough of learning v side by side with the younger sufferer. Ro¬ 
man emperors, mediaeval schisms, early British manufacturers, 
Philippa of Hainault, Flemish woolen stuffs, Magna Charta, 
the sidereal heavens, Luther, Newton, Huss, Galileo, Calvin, 
Loyola, Sir Robert Walpole, Cardinal Wolsey, conchologv, 
Arianism in the Early Church, trial by jury, Habeas Corpus, 
zoology, Mr. Pitt, the American war, Copernicus, Confucius, 
Mohammed, Harvey, Jenner, Lycurgus, and Catherine of Ara¬ 
gon; through a very diabolical dance of history, science, the¬ 
ology, philosophy, and instruction of all kinds, did this devoted 
priestess lead her hapless victim, struggling onward toward 
that distant altar at which Pallas Athene waited, pale and in¬ 
scrutable, to receive a new discp*-- 

But Olivia Marchmont did not mean to oe unmerciful; sne 
meam to oe goon to Her step-daughter. She did not love her; 



JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


79 


but on the other hand, she did not dislike her. Her feelings 
were simply negative. Mary understood this, and the submis¬ 
sive obedience she rendered to her step mother was untempered 
by affection. So, for nearly two years these two people led a 
monotonous life, unbroken by any more important event than 
a dinner-party at Marchmont Towers, ora brief visit to Harrow- 
gate or Scarborough. 

This monotonous existence was not to go on forever. The 
fatal day, so horribly feared by John Marchmont, was creeping 
closer and closer. The sorrow which had been shadowed in 
every childish dream, in every childish prayer, came at last; 
and Mary Marchmont was left an orphan. 

Poor John had never quite recovered the effects of his winter 
excursion to Scotland; neither his wife’s devoted nursing, nor 
his physician’s care, could avail forever; and late in the autumn 
of the second year of his marriage, he sank slowly and peace¬ 
fully enough as regards physical suffering, but not without 
bitter grief of mind. 

In vain Hubert Arundel talked to him; in vain did he himself 
pray for faith and comfort in this dark hour of trial. He could 
not bear to leave his child alone in the world. In the foolish¬ 
ness of his love he would have trusted in the strength of hi? 
own arm to shield her in the battle; he could not trust her 
hopefully to the arm of God. He prayed for her night and day 
during the last week of his illness; while she was praying pas 
sionately, almost madly, that he might be spared to her, or that 
she might die with him. Better for her, according to all mor¬ 
tal reasoning, if she had. Happier for her, a thousand times, if 
she could have died as she wished to die, clinging to her father’s 
breast. 

The blow fell at last upon those two loving hearts. These 
were the awful shadows of death that shut his child’s face from 
John Marchmont’s fading sight. His feeble arms groped here 
and there for her in that dim and awful obscurity. 

Yes, this was death. The narrow tract of yellow sand had 
little by little grown narrower and narrower. The dark and 
cruel waters were closing in; the feeble boat went down into the 
darkness; and Mary stood alone with her dead father’s hand 
clasped in hers—the last feeble link which bound her to the 
Past—looking blankly forward to an unknown Future, 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE DAY OF DESOLATION. 

Yes: the terrible day had come. Mary Marchmont roamed 
hither and thither in the big gaunt rooms, up and down the 
lou'g drearv corridors, white and ghostlike in her mute anguish, 
while the undertaker’s men were busy in her father's chamber, 
and while John’s widow sat in the study below, writing busi¬ 
ness letters, and making all necessary arrangements for the fu¬ 
neral. 

In those early days no one attempted to comfort the orphan. 
There was something more terrible than the loudest grief in the 



80 


JOHN MARCmTONT'S LEGACY . 

awful quiet of the girl’s anguish. The wan eyes, looking wearily 
out of a white haggard face, that seemed drawn and contracted 
as if by some hideous physical torture, were tearless. Except 
the one long wail of despair which had burst from her lips in 
the awful moment of her father’s death-agony, no cry of sor¬ 
row, no utterance of pain, had given relief to Mary March- 
mont’s suffering. 

She suffered, and was still. She shrank away from all human 
companionship; she seemed specially to avoid the society of her 
step-mother. She locked the door of her room upon all who 
would have intruded on her. and flung herself upon the bed to 
lie there in a dull stupor for hour after hour. But when the 
twilight was gray in the desolate corridors, the wretched girl 
wandered out into the gallery on which her father’s room 
opened, and hovered near that solemn death-chamber—fearful 
to go in, fearful to encounter the watchers of the dead, lest 
they should torture her by their hackneyed expressions of sym¬ 
pathy, lest they should agonize her by their commonplace talk 
of the lost. 

Once during that brief interval, while the coffin still held ter¬ 
rible tenancy of the death-chamber, the girl wandered in the 
dead of the night, when all but the hired watchers were asleep, 
to the broad landing of the oaken staircase, and into a deep re¬ 
cess formed by an embayed window that opened over the great 
stone porch which sheltered the principal western entrance to 
Marchmont Towers. 

The window had been left open; for even in the bleak autumn 
weather the atmosphere of the great house seemed hot and op¬ 
pressive to its living inmates, whose spirits were weighed down 
by a vague sense of something akin to terror of the Awful 
Presence in that Lincolnshire mansion. Mary had wandered to 
this open window, scarcely knowing whither she went, after 
remaining for a long time on her knees by the threshold of her 
father’s room, with her head resting against the oaken panel of 
the door—not praying, why should she pray now, unless her 
prayers could have restored the dead ? She had come out upon 
the wide staircase, and passed the ghostly pictured faces that 
looked grimly down upon her from the oaken wainscot against 
which they hung; she had wandered here in the dim, gray light; 
there was light somewhere in the sky, but only a shadowy and 
uncertain glimmer of fading starlight or coming dawn. Aud 
she stood now with her head resting against one of the angles of 
the massive stone-work, looking out of the open window. 

The morning which was already glimmering dimly in the 
eastern sky behind Marchmont Towers was to witness poor 
John’s funeral. For nearly six days Mary Marchmont had 
avoided all human companionship; for nearly six days she had 
shunned all human sympathy and comfort. During all that 
time she had never eaten, except when forced to do so by her 
step-mother, who had visited her from time to time, and had 
insisted upon sitting by her bedside while she took the food that 
had been brought to her. Heaven knows how often the girl 
had slept during those six dreary days; but her feverish slum- 


81 


JOHN MARCHMONT LKGAOY . 

hers had brought her very little rest or refreshment. They had 
brought her nothing but cruel dreams, in which her father was 
still alive; in which she felt his thin arms clasped round her 
neck, his faint and fitful breath warm upon her cheek. 

A great clock in the stable struck five while Mary Marchmont 
stood looking out of the Tudor window. The broad gray flat 
before the house stretched far away, melting into the shadowy 
sky. The pale stars grew paler as Mary looked at them; the 
black water pools began to glimmer faintly under the widening 
patch of light in the eastern sky. The girl’s senses were be¬ 
wildered by her suffering—her head was light and dizzy. 

Her father’s death had made so sudden and terrible a break 
in her existence, that she could scarcely believe the world had 
not come to an end, with all the joys and sorrows of its inhab¬ 
itants. Would there be anything more after to-morrow? she 
thought; would the blank days and nights go monotonously on 
when the story that had given them a meaning and a purpose 
had come to its dismal end ? Surely not; surely, after those 
gaunt iron gates, far away across the swampy waste that was 
called a park, had closed upon her father’s funeral train, the 
world would come to an end, and there would be no more time 
or space. I think she really believed this in the semi delirium 
into which she had fallen within the last hour. She believed 
that all would be over, and that she and her despair would melt 
away into the emptiness that was to ingulf the universe after 
her father’s funeral. 

Then suddenly the full reality of her grief flashed upon her 
with horrible force. She clasped her hands upon her forehead, 
and a low, faint cry broke from her white lips. 

It was not all over. Time and space would not be annihilated. 
The weary, monotonous, workaday world would still go upon 
its course. Nothing would be changed. The great, gaunt stone 
mansion would still stand, and the dull machinery of its interior 
would still go on; the same hours; the same customs; the same 
inflexible routine. John Marchmont would be carried out of the 
house that had owned him master, to lie in the dismal vault 
under Kemberling Church; and the world in which he had made 
so little stir would go on without him. The easy-chair in which 
he had been wont to sit would be wheeled away from its corner 
by the fireplace in the western drawing-room. The papers in 
his study would be sorted and put away, or taken possession of 
by strange hands. Cromwells and Napoleons die, and the earth 
reels for a moment, only to be “alive and bold” again in the 
next instant, to the astonishment of poets, and the calm satis¬ 
faction of philosophers; and ordinary people eat their breakfasts 
while the telegram lies beside them upon the table, and the ink 
in which Mr. Reuter’s message is recorded is still wet from the 
machine in Printing-House Square. 

Anguish and despair more terrible than any of the tortures she 
had felt yet took possession of Mary Marchmont’s breast. For 
the first time she looked out at her own future. Until now she 
had thought only of her father’s death. She had despaired be¬ 
cause he was gone: but she had never contemplated the horrpy 


m JOHN MARCTIMONT'S LEGACY. 

Of her future life—a life in which she was to exist without him. 
A sudden agony, that was near akin to madness, seized upon 
this girl, in whose sensitive nature affection had always had a 
morbid intensity. She shuddered with a wild dread at the blank 
prospect of that horrible future; and as she looked out at the 
wide stone steps below the window from which she was leaning, 
for the first time in her young life the idea of self-destruction 
flashed across her mind. 

She uttered a cry, a shrill, almost unearthly cry, that was, 
notwithstanding, low and feeble, and clambered suddenly upon 
the broad stone sill of the Tudor casement. She wanted to fling 
herself down and dash her brains out upon the stone steps 
below, but in the utter prostration of her state she was too fee¬ 
ble to do this, and she fell backward and dropped in a heap 
upon the polished oaken flooring of the recess, striking her 
forehead as she fell. She lay there unconscious until nearly 
seven o’clock, when one of the women servants found her, and 
carried her off to her owu room, where she suffered herself to 
be undressed and put to bed 

Mary Marchmont did not speak until the good-hearted Lin¬ 
colnshire house-maid had laid her in her bed, and was going 
away to tell Olivia of the state in which she had found the 
orphan girl. 

Don’t tell my stepmother anything about me, Susan,” she 
said; “ I think I was mad last night.” 

This speech frightened the house-maid, and she went straight 
to the widow’s room. Mrs. Marchmont, always an early riser, 
had been up and dressed for some time, and went at once to 
look at her step daughter. 

She found Mary very calm and reasonable. There was no 
trace of bewilderment or delirium now in Her manner; and 
when the principal doctor of Swampington came’ a couple of 
hours afterward, to look at the young heiress, he declared that 
there was no cause for any alarm. The young lady was sensi¬ 
tive, morbidly sensitive, he said, and must be kept very quiet 
for a few days, and watched by some one whose presence would 
not annoy her. If there was any girl of her own age whom 
she had ever shown a predilection for. that girl would be the 
fittest companion for her just now. After a few days it would 
be advisable that she should have change of air and change of 
scene. She must not be allowed to brood continuously on her 
father’s death. The doctor repeated this last injunction more 
than once. It was most important that she should not give 
way too perpetually to her grief. 

So Mary Marchmont lay in her darkened room while her 
father’s funeral train was moving slowly away from the western 
entrance. It happened that Mary’s apartments looked out into 
the quadrangle, and she heard none of the subdued sounds 
which attended the departure of that solemn procession. In 
her weakness she had grow 7 n submissive to the will of others. 
She thought this feebleness and exhaustion gave warning of her 
approaching death. Her prayers would be granted, after all. 
This anguish and despair would be but of brief duration, and 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY . 


83 


she would ere long be carried to the vault under Kemberling 
Church, to lie beside her father in the black stillness of that 
dreadful place. 

Mrs. Marchmont strictly obeyed the doctor’s injunctions. A 
girl of seventeen, the daughter of a small tenant farmer near 
the Towers, had been a special favorite with Mary, who was not 
apt to make friends among strangers. This girl, Hester Pollard, 
was sent for, and came, willingly and gladly, to watch her 
young patroness. She brought her needlework with her, and 
sat near the window, busily employed, while Mary lay shrouded 
by the pure white curtains of the bed. All active services neces¬ 
sary for the comfort of the invalid were performed by Olivia or 
her own special attendant—an old servant who had lived with 
the rector ever since his daughter's birth, and had only left him 
to follow that daughter to Marchmont Towers after her mar¬ 
riage. So Hester Pollard had nothing to do but to keep very 
quiet, and patiently await the time when Mary might be dis¬ 
posed to talk to her. The farmer's daughter was a gentle, un¬ 
obtrusive creature, very well fitted for the duty imposed upon 
her. 


CHAPTER XII. 

PAUL. 

Olivia Marchmont sat in her late husband’s study while 
John’s funeral train was moving slowly along under the misty 
October sky. A long stream of carriages followed the stately 
hearse, with its four black horses, and its voluminous draper¬ 
ies of rich velvet, and nodding plumes that were damp and 
heavv with the autumn atmosphere. The unassuming master 
of Marchmont Towers had won for himself a quiet popularity 
among the simple country gentry, and the best families in Lin¬ 
colnshire had sent their chiefs to do honor to bis burial, or at 
the lease their empty carriages to represent them at that mourn¬ 
ful ceremonial. Olivia sat in her dead husband’s favorite 
chamber. Her head lay back upon the'cushion of the roomy 
morocco-covered arm-chair in which he had so often sat. She 
had been working hard that morning, and indeed every morn¬ 
ing since John Marchmont’s death, sorting and arranging papers, 
with the aid of Richard Paulette, the Lincoln’s Inn solicitor, and 
James Gormby, the land-steward. She knew that she had been 
left sole guardian of her siep-daughter, and executrix to her 
husband’s will; and she had lost no time in making herself ac¬ 
quainted with the business details of the estate, and the full 
nature of the responsibilities intrusted to her. 

She was resting now. She had done all that could be done 
until after the reading of the will. She had attended to her 
step-daughter. She had stood in one of the windows of the 
western drawing-room, watching the departure of the funeral 
cortege; and now she abandoned herself for a brief space to that 
idleness which was so unusual to her. 

A fire burned in the low grate at her feet, and a rough cur— 
half shepherd’s dog, half Scotch deer-hound, who had been fqm| 



Hi 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY . 


of John but was not fond of Olivia—lay at the further extrem t 
of the hearth-rug, watching her suspiciously. 

Mrs. March mont’s personal appearance had not altered during 
the two years of her married life. Her face was thin and hag 
gard, but it had been thin and haggard before her marriage. 
And yet no one could deny that the face was handsome and the 
features beautifully chiseled. But the gray eyes were hard and 
cold, the line of the faultless eyebrows gave a stern expression 
to the countenance; the thin lips were rigid and compressed. 
The face wanted both light and color. A sculptor copying it 
line by line would have produced a beautiful head. A painter 
must have lent his own glowing tints if he wished to represent 
Olivia Marchmont as a lovely woman. 

Her pale face looked paler, and her dead black hair blacker, 
against the blank whiteness or her widow’s cap. Her mourning 
dress clung closely to her tall slender figure. She was little more 
than twenty-five, but she looked a woman of thirty. It had been 
her misfortune to look older than she was from a very early 
period in her life. 

She had not loved her husband when she married him, nor 
had she ever felt for him that love which in most womanly nat¬ 
ures grows out of custom and duty. It was not in her nature 
to love. Her passionate idolatry of her boyish cousin had been 
the one solitary affection that had ever held a place in her cold 
heart. All the fire of her nature had been concentrated in this 
one folly, this one passion, against which only heroic self-tort¬ 
ures had been able to prevail. 

Mrs. March mont felt no grief, therefore, at her husband’s loss. 
She had felt the shock of his death, and the painful oppression 
of his dead presence in the house. She had faithfully nursed 
him through many illnesses; she had patiently tended him until 
the very last; she had done her duty. And now, for the first 
time, she had leisure to contemplate the past, and look forward 
to the future. 

So far this woman had fulfilled the task which she had taken 
upon herself: she had beOn true and loyal to the vow she had 
made before God’s altar, in the church of Swampington. And 
now she was free. No, not quite free, for she had a heavy bur¬ 
den yet upon her hands—the solemn charge of her step-daughter 
during the girl’s minority. But as regarded marriage-vows and 
marriage-ties she was free. 

She was free to love Edward Arundel again. 

The thought came upon her with a rush and an impetus wild 
and strong as the sudden uprising of a whirlwind or the loosing 
of a mountain torrent that has long been bound. She was a wife 
no longer. It was no longer a sin to think of the bright-haired 
soldier, fighting far away. She was free. When Edward re- 
tui'ned to England by and by he would find her free once more; 
a young widow—young, handsome, and rich enough to be no 
bad prize for a younger son. He would come back and find her 
thus; and then—and then- 

She flung one of her clinched bandsup into the air, and struck 
It on her forehead in a sudden paroxysm of rage. What then ? 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 85 

Would he love her any better then than he had loved her two years 
ago? No; he would treat her with the same cruel indifference, 
the same commonplace cousinly friendliness with which he had 
mocked and tortured her before. Oh, shame! Oh, misery! Was 
there no pride in women, that there could be one among them 
fallen so low as she; ready to grovel at the feet of a fair-haired 
boy, and to cry aloud “Love me! love me! or be pitiful, and 
strike me dead!” 

Better that John Marchmont had lived forever, better that 
Edward Arundel should die far away upon some Eastern battle¬ 
field, before some Afghan fortress, than that he should return to 
inflict upon her the same tortures she had writhed under two 
years before. 

“God grant that he may never come back!” she thought. 
“ God grant that he may marry out yonder, and live and die 
there. God keep him from me forever and forever in this 
weary world!” 

And yet in the next moment, with the inconsistency which 
is the chief attribute of that madness we call love, her thoughts 
wandered away dreamily into visions of the future, and she 
pictured Edward Arundel back again at Swampington, at 
Marchmont Towers. Her soul burst its bonds and expanded, 
and drank in the sunlight of gladness, and she dared to think 
that it might be so—there might be happiness yet for her. He 
had been a boy when he went back to India—careless, indiffer¬ 
ent. He would return a man—graver, wiser, altogether changed; 
changed so much as to love her, perhaps. 

She knew that, at least, no rival had shut her cousin’s heart 
against her, when she and he had been together two years be¬ 
fore. He had been indifferent to her; buf he had been indiffer¬ 
ent to others also. There was comfort in that recollection. She 
had questioned him very sharply as to Ids life in India and at 
Dangerfield, and she had discovered no trace of any tender 
memory of the past, no hint of a cherished dream of the future. 
His heart had been empty; a boyish, unawakened heart; a temple 
in which the niches were untenanted, the shrine unhallowed by 
the goddess. 

Olivia Marchmont thought of these things. For a few mo¬ 
ments, if only for a few moments, she abandoned herself to 
such thoughts as these. She let herself go. She released the 
stern hold which it washer habit to keep upon her own mind; 
and in those bright moments of delicious abandonment the 
glorious sunshine streamed in upon her narrow life, and visions 
of a possible future expanded before her like a fairy panorama, 
stretching away into realms of vague light and splendor. It 
was possible; it w 7 as at least possible. 

But again, in the next moment the magical panorama col¬ 
lapsed and shriveled away, like a burning scroll; the fairy pict¬ 
ure whose gorgeous coloring she had looked upon with dazzled 
eyes, almost blinded with overpowering glory, shrank into a 
handful of black ashes, and was gone. The woman’s strong 
nature reasserted itself, the iron will rose up, ready to do battle 
with the foolish heart. 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


“1 will not be fooled a second lime,” she cried. “ Did I suf¬ 
fer so little when I blotted that image out of my heart? Did 
the destruction of my cruel Juggernaut cost me so small an 
agony that J must needs be ready to elevate the false god again, 
and crush out my heart once more under the brazen wheels ? 
He will never love me!” 

She writhed; this self-sustained and resolute woman writhed 
in her anguish as she uttered those five words, “ He will never 
love me!” She knew that they were true; that of all thechanges 
that Time could bring to pass, it would never bring such a 
change as that. There was not one element of sympathy be¬ 
tween herself and the young soldier; they had not one thought 
in common. Nay, more; there was an absolute antagonism 
between them, which, in spite of her love, Olivia fully recog¬ 
nized. Over the gulf that separated them no coincidence of 
thought or fancy, no sympathetic emotion, ever stretched, its 
electric chain to draw them together in mysterious union. 
They stood aloof, divided by the width of an intellectual 
universe. The woman knew this, and hated herself for her 
folly, scorning alike her love and its object; but her love was 
not the less because of her scorn. It was a madness, an isolated 
madness, which stood alone in her soul, and fought for mastery 
over her better aspirations, her wiser thoughts. We are all 
familiar with strange stories of wise and great minds which have 
been ridden by some hobgoblin fancy, some one horrible mono¬ 
mania. 

Had Olivia Marchmont lived a couple of centuries before, she 
would have gone straight to the nearest old crone, and would 
have boldly accused the wretched woman of being the author 
of her misery. 

“ You harbor a black cat and other noisome vermin, and you 
prowl about muttering to yourself o’ nights,” she might 
have said. “You have been seen to gather herbs, and you 
make strange and uncanny signs with your palsied old fingers. 
The black cat is the devil, your colleague; and the rats under 
your tumble-down roof are his imps, your associates. It is you 
who have instilled this horrible madness into my soul; for it 
could not come of itself.” 

And Olivia Marchmont, being resolute and strong-minded* 
would not have rested until her tormentor had paid the penalty 
of her foul work at a stake in the nearest market-place. 

And, indeed, some of our madnesses are so mad, some of our 
follies are so foolish, that we might almost be forgiven if we be¬ 
lieved that there was a company of horrible crones meeting 
somewhere on an invissible Brocken, and making incantations 
for our destruction. Take up a newspaper and read its hideous 
revelations of crime and folly, and it will be scarcely strange if 
you involuntarily wonder whether witchcraft is a dark fable of 
the Middle Ages, or a dreadful truth of the nineteenth century. 
Must not some of these miserable creatures whose stories we 
read be possessed; possessed by eager, relentless demons, who 
lash and goad them onward, until no black abyss of vice, no 


JOHN MARCHMONT'8 LEGACY, 8? 

hideous gulf of crime, is black or hideous enough to content 
them ? 

Olivia Marchmont might have been a good and great woman. 
She had all the elements of greatness. She had genius, resolu¬ 
tion, an indomitable courage, an iron will, perseverance, self- 
denial, temperance, chastity.. But against all these qualities 
was set a fatal and foolish love for a boy’s handsome face and 
frank and genial manner. If Edward Arundel had never 
crossed her path, her unfettered soul might have taken the high¬ 
est and grandest flight; but, chained down, bound, trampled by 
her love for him, she groveled on the earth like some maimed 
and wounded eagle, who sees his fellows afar off, high in the 
purple empyrean, and loathes himself for his impotence. 

“What do I love him for?” she thought. “ Is it because he 
has blue eyes and chestnut hair, with wandering gleams of 
golden light in it ? Is it because he has gentlemanly manners, 
and is easy and pleasant, genial and light-hearted? Is it be¬ 
cause he has a dashing walk and the air of a man of fashion ? It 
must be for some of these attributes surely; for I know nothing 
more in him. Of all things he has ever said, I can remember 
nothing—and I remember his smallest words, Heaven help me! 
—that any sensible person could think worth repeating. He is 
brave, I dare say, and generous; but neither braver nor more 
generous than other men of his rank and position.” 

She sat lost in such a reverie as this while her dead husband 
was being carried to the roomy vault set apart for the owners of 
Marchmont Towers and their kindred; she.was absorbed in some 
such thoughts as these, when one of the grave, gray-headed old 
servants brought her a card upon a heavy salver emblazoned 
with the Marchmont arms. 

Olivia took the card almost mechanically. There are some 
thoughts which carry us a long way from the ordinary occupa¬ 
tions of everv-day life, and it is not easy to return to the dull 
jog-trot routine. The widow passed her left hand across her 
brow before she looked at the name inscribed upon the card in 
her right. 

“ Mr. Paul Marchmont.” 

She started as she read the name, Paul Marchmont! She re¬ 
membered what her husband had told her of this man. It was 
not much: for John’s feelings on the subject of his cousin had 
been of so vague a nature that he had shrunk from expounding 
them to his stern, practical wife. He had told her. therefore, 
that he did not very much care for Paul, and that he wished no 
intimacy ever to arise between the artist and Mary: but he had 
said nothing more than this. 

“The gentleman is waiting to see me, I suppose?” Mrs. 
Marchmont said. 

“Yes, ma’am. The gentleman came to Kemberlmg by the 
11.5 train from London, and has driven over here in one of 
Harris’ flys.” ... T . . 

“Tell him I will come to him immediately. Is he in the 
drawing-room?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 


The man bowed and left the room. Olivia lingered by the 
fireplace with her foot on the fender, her elbow resting on the 
carved oak chimney-piece. 

“ Paul Marchmont! He has come to the funeral, I suppose. 
And he expects to find himself mentioned in the will, I dare 
say. I think, from what my husband told me, he will be dis¬ 
appointed in that. Paul Marchmont! If Mary were to die un¬ 
married, this man or his sisters would inherit Marchmont 
Towers.” 

( There was a looking-glass over the mantel-piece; a narrow, 
oblong glass, in an old-fashioned carved-ebony frame, which 
was inclined forward. Olivia looked musingly in this glass, and 
smoothed the heavy bands of dead-black hair under her cap. 

“There are people who would call me handsome,” she 
thought, as she looked with a moody frown at her image in the 
glass; ‘ and yet I have seen Edward Arundebs eyes wander 
away from my face to Watch the swallows skimming by in the 
sun, or the ivy-leaves flapping against the wall.” 

She turned from the glass with a sigh, and went out into a 
dusky corridor. The shutters of all the principal rooms and the 
windows upon the grand staircase were still closed; the wide 
hall was dark and gloomy, and drops of rain spattered every 
now and then upon the logs that smoldered on the wide old- 
fashioned hearth. The misty October morning had heralded a 
wet day. 

Paul Marchmont was sitting in a low easy chair before a blaz¬ 
ing fire in the western drawing room, the red light full upon 
his face. It was a handsome face, or perhaps, to speak more ex¬ 
actly, it was one of those faces that are generally called “ in¬ 
teresting;” the features were very delicate and refined, the pale 
grayish-blue eyes were shaded by long brown lashes, and the 
small and rather feminine mouth was overshadowed by a slender 
auburn mustache, under which the rosy tint of lips" was very 
visible. But it was Paul Marchmont's hair which gave a peculi¬ 
arity to a personal appearance that might otherwise have been 
in no way out of the common. This hair, fine, silky, and 
luxuriant, was white , although its owner could not have been 
more than thirty-seven years of age. 

The uninvited guest rose as Olivia Marchmont entered the 
room. 

“ I have the honor of speaking to my cousin’s widow,” he 
said, with a courteous smile. 

“Yes; I am Mrs. Marchmont.” 

Olivia seated herself near the fire. The wet day was cold and 
cheerless, the dark house dismal and chilly. Mrs. Marchmont 
shivered as she extended her long thin hand to the blaze. 

“ And you are doubtless surprised to see me here, Mrs. March¬ 
mont,” the artist said, leaning upon the back of his chair in the 
easy attitude of a man who means to make himself at home- 
“but believe me, that although I never took advantage of a 
very friendly letter written to me by poor John_” 

Paul Marchmont paused for a moment, keeping sharp watch 


JOHN MAUCH MONT’S LEGACY. 89 

upon the widow’s face; but no sorrowful expression, no evi¬ 
dence of emotion, was visible in that inflexible countenance. 

‘‘Although, I repeat, I never availed myself of a sort of 
general invitation to come and shoot his partridges, or borrow 
money of him, or take advantage of any of those other little 
privileges generally claimed by a man's poor relations, it is not 
to be supposed, my dear Mrs. Marchmont, that I was altogether 
forgetful of either Marchmont Towers or its owner, my cousin. 
I did not come here, because I am a hard-working man, and 
the idleness of a country house would have been ruin to me. 
But I heard sometimes of my cousin from neighbors of his.” 

“ Neighbors!” repeated Olivia, in a tone of surprise. 

“ Yes; people near enough to be called neighbors in the coun¬ 
try. My sister lives at Stanfield. She is married to a surgeon 
who practices in that delightful town. You know Stanfield, of 
course ?” 

“ No, I have never been there. It is tive-and-twenty miles 
from here.” 

“ Indeed! too far for a drive, then. Yes, my sister lives at 
Stanfield. John never knew much of her in his adversity, and 
therefore, may be forgiven if he forgot her in his prosperity. 
But she did not forget him. We poor relations have excellent 
memories. The Stanfield people have so little to talk about, that 
it is scarcely any wonder if they are inquisitive about the affairs 
of the grand country gentry round about them. 1 heard of 
John through my sister: I heard of his marriage through her ” 
—he bowed to Olivia as he said this—“ and I wrote immediately 
to congratulate him upon that happy event,” he bowed again 
here; “ and it was through Lavinia Westop, my sister, that I 
heard of poor John’s death, one day before the announcement 
appeared in the columns of the Times. I am sorry to find that 
I am too late for the funeral. I could have wished to have paid 
my cousin the last tribute of esteem that one man can pay 
another.” 

“You would wish to hear the reading 6f the will?” Olivia 
said, interrogatively. 

Paul Marchmont shrugged his shoulders, with a low, careless 
laugh; not an indecorous laugh—nothing that this man did or 
said ever appeared ill-advised or out of place. The people who 
disliked him were compelled to acknowledge that they disliked 
him unreasonably, and very much on the Doctor-Fell principle; 
for it was impossible to take objection to either his manners or 
his actions. 

“ That important legal document can have very little interest 
for me, my dear Mrs. Marchmont,” he said, gayly. “ John can 
have had nothing to leave me. I am too well acquainted with 
the terms of my grandfather’s will to have any mercenary hopes 
in coming to Marchmont Towers.” 

He stopped, and looked at Olivia’s impassible face. 

“What on earth could have induced this woman to marry my 
cousin ?” lie thought. “ John could have had very little to leave 
his widow,” 


90 JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

He played with the jingling ornaments at his watch-chain, 
looking reflectively at the fire for some moments. 

“Miss Marchmont—my cousin, Mary Marchmont, I should 
say—bears her loss pretty well, I hope?” 

Olivia shrugged her shoulders. 

“I am sorry to say that my step-daughter displays very little 
Christian resignation,” she said. 

And then a spirit within her arose and whispered, with a 
mocking voice, “What resignation do you show—you, who 
should be so good a Christian ? How have you learned to school 
your rebellious heart ?” : 

“ My cousin is very young,” Paul Marchmont said, presently. 

“ She was fifteen last July.” . 

“Fifteen! Very young to be the owner of Marchmont 
Towers and an income of eleven thousand a year,” returned the 
artist. He walked to one of the long windows, and drawing 
aside the edge of the blind, looked out upon the stone terrace 
and the wide flats before the mansion. The rain dripped and 
splashed upon th stone steps; the rain drops hung upon the 
grim adornment of the carved balustrade, soaking into moss- 
grown escutcheons and half-obliterated coats of-arms. The 
weird Willows by the pools far aw’ay, and a solitary poplar near 
the house, looked gaunt and black against the dismal gray sky. 

Paul Marchmont dropped the blind, and turned aw ay from 
the gloomy landscape with a half-contemptuous gesture. “I 
don’t know that I envy my cousin after all,” he said; “ the 
place is as dreary as Tennyson’s Moated Grange.” 

There vvas the sound of w 7 heels on the carriage-drive before 
the terrace, and presently a subdued murmur of hushed voices 
in the hall. Mr. Richard Paulette, and the two medical men 
who had attended John Marchmont, had returned to the Tow’ers 
for the reading of the will. Hubert Arundel had returned with 
them; but the other followers in the funeral train had departed 
to their several homes. The undertaker and his men had made 
their way back to Marchmont by the side-entrance, and were 
making themselves very comfortable after the fulfillment of 
their mournful duties. 

The will was to be read in the dining-room; and Mr. Paulette 
and the clerk who had accompanied him to Marchmont Towers 
were already seated at one end of the long carved-oak table, 
busy with their papers and pens and ink, assuming an impor¬ 
tance the occasion did not require. Olivia went out into the hall 
to speak to her father. 

“You will find Mr. Marchmont’s solicitor in the dining¬ 
room,” she said to Paul, who w’as looking at some of the old 
pictures on the drawing-room w^alls. 

A large fire w as blazing in the wide grate at the end of the 
dining-room. The blinds had been drawn up. There was no 
longer need that the house should be wrapped in darkness. 
The Awful Presence had departed; and such light as there w as 
in the gloomy October sky was free to enter the rooms which 
the death of one quiet, unobtrusive creature had made for a time 
desolate. 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


91 


There was no sound in the room but the low voices of the two 
doctors talking of their late patient in undertones near the fire¬ 
place, and the occasional fluttering of the papers under the 
lawyer’s band. The clerk, who sat respectfully a little way behind 
his roaster, and upon the very edge of his ponderous morocco- 
covered chair, had been wont to give John Marchmont his 
orders, and to lecture him for being tardy with his work a few 
years before, in the Lincoln's Inn office. He was wondering 
now whether he should find himself remembered in the dead 
man’s will, to the extent of a mourning-ring or an old-fashioned 
silver snuff-box. 

Richard Paulette looked up as Olivia and her father entered 
the room, followed at a little distance by Paul Marchmont, who 
walked at a leisurely pace, looking at the carved doorways and 
the pictures against the wainscot, and appearing, as he had de¬ 
clared himself, very little concerned in the important business 
about to be transacted. 

“ We shall want Miss Marchmont here, if you please,” Mr. 
Paulette said, as he looked up from his papers. 

“ Is it necessary that she should be present?” Olivia asked. 

“Very necessary.” 

“ But she is ill; she is in bed.” 

“It is most important that she should be here when the will 
is read. Perhaps Mr. Bolton ”—the lawyer looked toward one 
of the medical men—“ will see. He will be able to tell us 
whether Miss Marchmont can safely come down-stairs.” 

Mr. Bolton, the Swampington surgeon who had attended Mary 
that morning, left the room with Olivia. The lawyer rose and 
warmed his hands at the blaze, talking to Hubert Arundel and 
the London physician as he did so. Paul Marchmont. who had 
not been introduced to any one, occupied himself entirely with 
the pictures for a little time; and then, strolling over to the fire¬ 
place, fell into conversation with the three gentlemen, contriv¬ 
ing, adroitly enough, to let them know who he was. The law¬ 
yer looked at him with some interest—a professional interest, 
no doubt; for Mr. Paulette had a copy of old Philip March- 
TL-ont’s will in one of the japanned deed-boxes, inscribed with 
poor John’s name. He knew that this easy-going, pleasant- 
mannered, white-haired young gentleman was the Paul March¬ 
mont named in that document, and stood next in succession to 
Mary. Mary might die unmarried, and it was as well to be 
friendly and civil to a man who was at least a possible client. 

The four gentlemen stood upon the broad Turkey hearth-rug 
for some time talking of the dead man, the wet weather, the 
cold autumn, the dearth of partridges, and other very safe top¬ 
ics of conversation. Olivia and the Swampington doctor were 
a long time absent, and Richard Paulette, who stood with his 
back to the fire, glanced every now and then toward the door. 

It opened at last, and Mary Marchmont came into the room, 
followed by her step-mother. 

Paul Marchmont turned at the sound of the opening of that 
ponderous mansion-door, and for the first time saw his second 
cousin, the young mistress of Marchmont Towers, He started 


92 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


as he looked at her, though with a scarcely perceptible move¬ 
ment, and a ciiange came over his face. The feminine pinky 
hue in his cheeks faded suddenly and left them white. It had 
been a peculiarity of Paul Marchmont’s, from his boyhood, al¬ 
ways to turn pale with every acute emotion. 

What was the emotion which had now blanched his cheeks? 
Was he thinking, “ Is this fragile creature the mistress of 
Marchmont Towers ? Is this frail life all that stands between 
me and eleven thousand a year?” 

The life which shone out of that feeble earthly tabernacle did 
indeed seem a frail and fitful flame, likely to be extinguished by 
any rude breath from the coarse outer world. Mary Marchmont 
was deadly pale; black shadows encircled her wistful hazel 
eyes. Her stiff new mourning dress, with its heavy trimmings 
of lusterless crape, seemed to hang loose upou her slender figure; 
her soft brown hair, damp with the water with which her burn¬ 
ing forehead had been bathed, fell in straight disordered tresses 
about her shoulders. Her e3 r es were tearless, her small mouth 
terribly compressed. The rigidity of her face betokened the 
struggle by which her sorrow was repressed. She sat down iu an 
easy-chair which Olivia indicated to her, and with her hands 
lying on the white handkerchief in her lap, and her swollen eye¬ 
lids drooping over her eyes, waited for the reading of her 
father’s will. It would be the last, the very last, she would 
ever hear of that dear father’s words. She remembered this, 
and was ready to listen attentively; but she remembered nothing 
else. What was it to her that she was sole heiress of all that 
great mansion, and of eleven thousand a year? She had never 
in her life thought of the Lincolnshire fortune with any refer¬ 
ence to herself or her own pleasures, and she thought of it less 
than ever now. 

The will was dated February 4, 1844, exactly two months after 
John’s marriage. It had been made by the master of March¬ 
mont Towers without the aid of a lawyer, and was only wit¬ 
nessed by John’s housekeeper and by ^Corson, the old valet, a 
confidential servant, who had attended upon Mr. Marchmont’s 
predecessor. 

Richard Paulette began to read; and Mary, for the first time 
since she had taken her seat near the fire, lifted her eyes, and 
listened breathlessly, with faintly tremulous lips. Olivia sat 
near her step-daughter: and Paul Marchmont stood in a careless 
attitude at one corner of the fireplace, with his shoulders rest¬ 
ing against the massive oaken chimney-piece. The dead man’s 
will ran thus: 

“ I John Marchmont of Marchmont Towers declare this to be 
my last will and testament. Being persuaded that my end is ap¬ 
proaching I feel my dear little daughter Mary will be left un¬ 
protected by any natural guardian My young friend Edward 
Arundel I had hoped when in my poverty would have been a 
inend and adviser to her if not a protector but her tender 
years and his position in life must place this now out of the 
question and I may die before a fond hope which T have lorn* 
cherished can be realized and which may now never be realized 


JOHN MAROHMONT’S LEGACY. 98 

I now desire to make my will more particularly to provide as well 
as I am permitted for the guardianship and care of my dear little 
Mary during her minority Now I will and desire that my wife 
Olivia shall act as guardian adviser and mother to my dear little 
Mary and that she place herself under the charge and guardian¬ 
ship of my wife And as she will be an heiress of very consid¬ 
erable property I would wish her to be'guided by the advice of 
my said wife in the management of her property and particu¬ 
larly in the choice of a husband As my dear little Mary will be 
amply provided for on my death I make no provision for her by 
this my will but 1 direct my executrix to present to her a dia¬ 
mond ring which I wish her to wear in memory of her loving 
father so that she may always have me in her thoughts and par¬ 
ticularly of these my-wishes as to her future life until she shall 
be of age and capable of acting on her own judgment I also 
request my executrix to present mj r young friend Edward Arun¬ 
del also with a diamond ring of the value of at least one hun¬ 
dred guineas as a slight tribute of the regard and esteem which 
I have ever entertained for him . . . . As to all the prop¬ 

erty as well real as personal over which I may at the time of my 
death have any control and capable of claiming or bequeathing 
I give devise and bequeath to my wife Olivia absolutely And I 
appoint my said wife sole executrix of this my will and guard¬ 
ian of my dear little Mary.” 

There were a few very small legacies, a mourning ring to the 
expectant clerk; and this was all. Paul Marchmont had been 
quite right. Nobody could be less interested than himself in 
this will. 

But he was apparently very much interested in John’s widow 
and daughter. He tried to enter into conversation with Mary; 
but the girl’s piteous manner seemed to implore him to leave 
her unmolested; and Mr. Bolton approached his patient almost 
immediately after the reading of the will, and in a manner took 
possession of her. Mary was very glad to leave the room once 
more, and to go back to the dim chamber where Hester Pollard 
sat at needlework. Olivia left her step-daughter to the care of 
this humble companion, and went back to the long dining-room, 
where the gentlemen still hung listlessly over the fire, not know ¬ 
ing very well what to do with themselves. 

Mrs. Marchmont could not do less than invite Paul to stay 
a few days at the Towers. She was virtually mistress of the 
house during Mary’s minority, and on her devolved all the 
troubles, duties, and responsibilities attendant on such a position. 
Her father was going to stay with her till the end of the week; 
and he therefore would be able to entertain Mr. Marchmont. 
Paul unhesitatingly accepted the widow’s hospitality. The old 
place was picturesque and interesting, he said; there were some 
genuine Holbeins in the hall and dining-room, and one good 
Lely in the drawing-room. He would give himself a couple of 
days’ holiday, and go to Stanfield by an early train on Saturday. 

“ I have not seen my sister for a long time,” he said; “ her life 
is dull enough and hard enough, Heaven knows, and she will 
be glad to see me upon my way back to London.” 



94 


JOHN MARCHMONT^ LEGACY. 


Olivia bowed. She did not persuade Mr. Marchmont to ex¬ 
tend his visit. The common courtesy she offered him was kept 
witbin the narrowest limits. She spent the best part of the time 
in the dead man’s study during Paul’s two days’ stay, and left 
the artist almost entirely to her father’s companionship. 

But she was compelled to appear at dinner, when she took 
her accustomed place at the head of the table; and Paul, there¬ 
fore, had some opportunity of sounding the depths of the 
strangest nature he had ever tried to fathom. He talked to her 
very much, listening with unvarying attention to every word 
she uttered. He watched her—but with no obtrusive gaze—al¬ 
most incessantly; and when he went away from Marchmont 
Towers, without having seen Mary since the reading of the 
will, it was of Olivia he thought; it was the recollection of 
Olivia which interested as much as it perplexed him. 

The few people waiting for the London train looked at the 
artist as he strolled up and down the quiet platform at Kember- 
ling Station, with his head bent and his eyebrows slightly con¬ 
tracted. He had a certain easy, careless grace of dress and car¬ 
riage, which harmonized well with his delicate face, his silken 
silvery hair, his carefully-trained auburn mustache, and rosy, 
womanish mouth. He was a romantic-looking man. He was 
the beau-ideal of the hero in a young lady’s novel. He was a 
man whom the school-girls would have called “a dear.” But it 
had been better, I think, for any helpless wretch to be in the 
bull-dog hold of the sturdiest Bill Sykes ever loosed upon so¬ 
ciety by right of his ticket-of-leave, than in the power of Paul 
Marchmont, artist and teacher of drawing, of Charlotte Street, 
Fitzroy Square. 

He was thinking of Olivia as he walked slowly up and down 
the bare platform, only separated by a rough wooden paling 
from the fiat open fields oh the outskirts of Kemberling. 

“ The litcJe girl is as feeble as a pale February butterfly,” he 
thought; “a puff of frosty wind might wither her away. But 
that woman, that woman—how handsome she is, with her ac¬ 
curate profile and iron mouth; but what a raging fire there is 
hidden somewhere in her breast, and devouring her beauty by 
day and night! If I wanted to paint the sleeping scene in 
‘ Macbeth,’ I’d ask her to sit for the thane’s wicked wife. Per¬ 
haps she has some bloody secret as deadly as the murder of 
a gray-headed Duncan upon her conscience, and leaves her bed 
chamber in the stillness of the night to walk up and down those 
long oaken corridors at the Towers, and wring her hands and 
wail aloud in her sleep. Why did she marry John Marchmont ? 
His life gave her little more than a fine house to live in. His 
death leaves her with nothing but ten or twelve thousand 
pounds in the three per cents. What is her mystery? what is 
her secret, I wonder? for she must surely have one.” 

Such thoughts as these filled his mind as the train carried 
him away from the lonely little station, and away from th* 
neighborhood of Marchmont Towers, within whose stony wans 
Mary lay in her quiet chamber, weepiog for her dead father, and 


JOHN MARCH MO NT'S LEGACY. 


95 


wishing—God knows in what utter singleness of heart—that 
she had been buried in the vault by his side. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

OLIVIA’S DESPAIR. 

The life which Mary and her step-mother led at Marchmont 
Towers after poor John’s death was one of those tranquil and 
monotonous existences that leave very little to be recorded, ex¬ 
cept the slow progress of the weeks and months, the gradual 
changes of the seasons. Mary bore her sorrows qrietly, as it 
was her nature to bear all things. The doctor’s advice was 
taken, and Olivia removed her step-daughter to Scarborough 
soon after the funeral. But the change of scene was slow to ef¬ 
fect any change in the state of dull despairing sorrow into which 
the girl had fallen. The sea-breezes brought no color into her 
pale cheeks. She obeyed her step-mother’s behests unmurmur- 
ingly, and wandered wearily by the dreary sea shore in the dis¬ 
mal November weather in search of health and strength. But 
wherever she went she carried with her the awful burden of her 
grief; and in every changing cadence of the low winter winds, 
in every varying murmur of the moaning waves, she seemed to 
hear her dead father’s funeral dirge. 

I think that, young as Mary Marchmont was, this mournful 
period was the great crisis of her life. The past, with its one 
great affection, had been swept away from her, and as yet there 
was no friendly figure to fill the dismal blank of the future. 
Had any kindly matron, Jany gentle Christian creature, been 
ready to stretch out her arms to the desolate orphan, Mary’s 
heart would have melted, and she would have crept to the shel¬ 
ter of that womanly embrace, to nestle there forever. But there 
was no one. Olivia Marchmont obeyed the letter of her hus¬ 
band’s solemn appeal, as she had obeyed the letter of those gos¬ 
pel sentences that had been familiar to her from her childhood, 
but was utterly unable to comprehend its spirit. She accepted 
the charge intrusted to her. She was unflinching in the per¬ 
formance of her duty; but no one glimmer of the holy light of 
motherly love and tenderness, the semi-divine compassion of 
womanhood, ever illumined the dark chambers of her heart. 
Every night she questioned herself upon her knees as to her 
rigid* performance of the level round of duty she had allotted to 
herself; every night—scrupulous and self-relentless as the hard¬ 
est judge who ever pronounced sentence upon a criminal—she 
took note of her own shortcomings, and acknowledged her defi¬ 
ciencies. 

But, unhappily, this self-devotion of Olivia’s pressed no less 
heavily upon Mary than on the widow herself* The more rigidly 
Mrs. Marchmont performed the duties which she understood to 
be laid upon her by her dead husband’s last will and testament, 
the harder became the orphan’s life. The weary tread-mill of 
education worked on, when the young student was well-nigh 
fainting upon every step on that hopeless ladder of knowledge. 
If Olivia, on communing with herself at night, found that the 



98 JOirn MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

day just done had been too easy a one for both mistress and 
pupil, the morrow’s allowance of Roman emperors and French 
grammar was made to do penance for yesterday’s shortcom¬ 
ings. 

“This girl has been intrusted to my care, and one of my first 
duties is to give her a good education,” Olivia Marchmont 
thought. “ She is inclined to be idle: but I must fight against 
her inclination, whatever trouble the struggle entails upon 
myself. The harder the battle the better for me, if I am con¬ 
queror.” 

It was only thus that Olivia Marchmont could hope to be a 
good woman. It was only by the rigid performance of hard 
duties, the patient practice of odious rites, that she could hope 
to attain that eternal crown which simpler Christians seem to 
win so easily. 

Morning and night the widow and her step-daughter read the 
Bible together; morning and night they knelt side by side to 
join in the same familiar prayers: yet all these readings, and all 
these prayers failed to bring them any nearer together. No 
tender sentence of inspiration, not the words of Christ Himself, 
ever struck the same chord in these two women’s hearts, bring¬ 
ing both into sudden unison. They went to church three times 
upon each dreary Sunday—dreary from the terrible uniformity 
which made one day a mechanical repetition of another, and 
sat together in the same pew: and there were times when some 
solemn word, some sublime injunction, seemed to fall with a 
new meaning upon the orphan girl’s heart; but if she looked at 
her step-mother’s face, thinking to see some ray of that sudden 
light which had newly shone into her own mind reflected there, 
the blank gloom of Olivia’s countenance seemed like a dead 
wall, across which no glimmer of radiance ever shone. 

They went back to Marchmont Towers in the early spring. 
People imagined that the young widow would cultivate the 
society of her husband’s old friends, and that morning callers 
would be welcome at the Towers, and the stately dinner-parties 
would begin again, when Mrs. Marchmont's year of mourning 
was over. But it was not so; Olivia closed her doors upon al¬ 
most all society, and devoted herself entirely to the education 
of her step-daughter. The gossips of Swampington and Kem- 
berling; the county gentry who had talked of her piety and 
patience, her unflinching devotion to the poor of her father’s 
parish, talked now of her self-abnegation, the sacrifices she 
made for her step-daughter’s sake; the noble manner in which 
she justified John Marchmont’s confidence in her goodness. 
Other women would have intrusted the heiress’ education to 
some hired governess, people said; other women would have 
been upon the look-out for a second husband: other women 
would have grown weary of the dullness of that lonely Lincoln¬ 
shire mansion, the monotonous society of a girl of sixteen. 
They were never tired of lauding Mrs. Marchmont as a model 
for all step-mothers in time to come. 

Did she sacrifice much, this woman whose spirit was a raging 
fire, who had the ambition of a Semiramis, the courage of a 


97 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

Boadicea, the resolution of a Lady Macbeth? Did she sacrifice 
much in resigning such provincial gayeties as might have 
adorned her life—a few dinner-parties, an occasional county 
ball, a flirtation with some ponderous landed gentleman or hunt-' 
ing squire ? 

No; these would very soon have grown odious to her; more 
odious than the monotony of her empty life, more wearisome 
even than the perpetual weariness of her own spirit. I said that 
when she accepted a new life by becoming the wife of John 
Marchmont, she acted in the spirit of a prisoner who is glad to 
exchange his old dungeon for a*new one. But, alas, the novelty 
of the prison-house had very speedily worn off, and that which 
Olivia Arundel had been at Swampington Rectory, Olivia March-' 
mont was now in the gaunt country mansion—a wretched 
woman, weary of herself and all the world, devoured by a slow 
consuming and perpetual fire. 

This woman was for two long, melancholy years Mary March- 
mont’s sole companion and instructress. I say sole companion 
advisedly; for the girl was not allowed to become intimate with 
the younger members of such few county families as still 
called occasionally at the Towers, lest she should become empty- 
beaded and frivolous by such companionship, Olivia said. Alas! 
there was little fear of Mary’s becoming empty-headed. As she 
grew taller and more slender, she seemed to get weaker and 
paler, and her heavy head drooped wearily under the load of 
knowledge which it had been made to carry, like some poor 
sickly flower oppressed by the weight of the dew-drops which 
would have revivified a hardier blossom. 

Heaven knows to what end Mrs. Marchmont educated her 
step-daughter. Poor Mary could have told the precise date of 
any event in universal history, ancient or modern; she could 
have named the exact latitude and longitude of the remotest 
island in the least navigable ocean, and might have given an 
accurate account of the manners and customs of its inhabitants 
had she been called upon to do so. She was alarmingly learned 
upon the subject of tertiary and old red sandstone, and could 
have told you almost as much as Mr. Charles Kingsley himself 
about the history of a gravel-pit—though I doubt if she could 
have conveyed her information in quite such a pleasant manner; 
she could have pointed out every star in the broad heavens 
above Lincolnshire, and could have told the history of its dis¬ 
covery; she knew the hardest names that science had given to 
the familiar field-flowers she met in her daily walks; yet I 
cannot say that her conversation was any the more brilliant be¬ 
cause of this, or that her spirits grew any the lighter under the 
influence of this general mental illumination. 

But M>s. Marchmont did most earnestly believe that this la¬ 
borious educationary process was one of the duties she owed 
her step-daughter; and when, at seventeen years of age, Mary 
emerged from the struggle, laden with such intellectual spoils 
as I have described above, the widow felt quiet satisfaction as 
she contemplated her work, and said to herself, “ In this, at 
least, I have done my duty.” 


9b 


JOHN MARCfiMOfrT'S LEGACY. 

Among all the dreary mass of instruction beneath which her 
health had nearly succumbed, the girl had learned one thing 
that was a source of pleasure to herself. She had learned to be¬ 
come a very brilliant musician. She was not a musical genius, 
remember; for no such vivid flame as the fire of genius had ever 
burned in her gentle breast, but all the tenderness of her nature, 
all the poetry of a hyper-poetical mind, centered in this one ac¬ 
complishment, and," condemned to perpetual silence in every 
other tongue, found a new and glorious language here. The 
girl had been forbidden to read Byron and Scott, but she was 
not forbidden to sit at her piano when the day’s toils were over, 
-and the twilight was dusky in her quiet room, playing dreamy 
melodies by Beethoven and Mozart, and making her own poetry 
to Mendelssohn’s wordless songs. I think her soul must have 
shrunk and withered away had it not been for this one resource, 
this one refuge in which her mind regained its elasticity, spring¬ 
ing up, like a trampled flower, into new life and beauty. 

Olivia was well pleased to spe the girl sit hour after hour at 
her piano. She had learned to play well and brilliantly herself, 
mastering all difficulties with the proud determination which 
was a part of her strong nature; but she had no special love for 
music. All things that compose the poetry and beauty of life 
had been denied to this woman, in common with the tenderness 
which makes the chief loveliness of womankind. She sat by and 
listened while Mary’s slight hands wandered over the instru¬ 
ment, carrying the player’s soul away into trackless regions of 
dreamland and beauty; but she heard nothing in the music ex¬ 
cept so many chords, so many tones and semi tones, played in 
such or such a time. 

It would have been scarcely natural for Mary Marchmont, re¬ 
served and self-contained though she had been ever since her 
father’s death, to have had no yearnings for more congenial 
companionship than that of her step-mother. The girl who 
had kept watch in her room by the doctor’s suggestion was the 
one friend and confidante whom the young mistress of March¬ 
mont Towers fain would have chosen. But here Olivia inter¬ 
posed, sternly forbidding any intimacy between the two girls. 
Hester Pollard was the daughter of a small tenant farmer, and 
no fit associate for Mrs. Marchraont’s step-daughter. Olivia 
thought that this taste for obscure company was the fruit of 
Mary's early training; the taint left by those bitter debasing 
days of poverty, in which John Marchmont and his daughter 
had lived in some wretched Lambeth lodging. 

“ But Hester Pollard is fond of me. mamma,” the girl pleaded; 
‘•and I feel so happy at the old farm house. They are all so 
kind to me when I go there—Hester’s father and mother and 
little brothers and sisters, you know; and the poultrv-yard. and 
the pigs and norses. and the green pond, with the geese cacklin^ 
round it, remind me of my aunt’s in Berkshire. I went there 
once with poor papa for a day or two; it was such a change 
after Oakley Street.” 

But Mrs." Marchmont was inflexible upon this point. She 
would allow her step-daughter to pay a ceremonial visit now 


JOHN 31A RCHMONT'S LEG A C l 


99 


and then to Farmer Pollard’s, and to be entertained with cow¬ 
slip wine and pound cake in the low, old-fashioned parlor, where 
all the polished mahogany chairs were so shining and slippery 
that it was a marvel how anybody ever contrived to sit down 
upon them. Olivia allowed such solemn visits as these now 
and then, and she permitted Mary to renew the farmer’s lease 
upon sufficiently advantageous terms, and to make occasional 
presents to her favorite, Hester. But all stolen visits to the 
farmyard, all evening rambles with the farmers daughter in 
the apple orchard at the back of the low, white farm-house were 
strictly interdicted; and though Mary and Hester were friends 
still, they were fain to be content with a chance of meeting once 
in the course of a dreary interval of months, and a silent press¬ 
ure of the hand. 

“ You mustn’t think that I am proud of my money, Hester,” 
Mary said to her friend, “ or that I forget you now that we see 
each other so seldom. Papa used to let me come to the farm 
whenever I liked; but papa had seen a great deal of poverty. 
Mamma keeps me almost always at home at my studies; but 
she is very good to me, and of course I am bound to obey her; 
papa wdshed me to obey her.” 

The orphan girl never for a moment forgot the terms of her 
father’s will. He had wished her to obey; what should she do 
then but be obedient? Her submission to Olivia’s lightest wish 
was only a part of the homage wffiich she paid to that beloved 
father’s memory. 

It was thus she grew 7 to early womanhood: a child in gentle 
obedience and docility; a woman by reason of that grave and 
thoughtful character which had been peculiar to her from her 
very infancy. It was in a life such as this, narrow, monotonous, 
joyless, that her seventeenth birthday came and went, scarcely 
noticed, scarcely remembered, in the dull uniformity of the days 
which left no track behind them; and Mary Marchmont was a 
woman—a woman with all the tragedy of life before her; in¬ 
fantine in her innocence and inexperience of the world outside 
Marchmont Towers. 

The passage of time had been so long unmarked by any break 
in its tranquil course, the dull routine of life had been so long- 
undisturbed by change, that I believe the two women thought 
their lives would goon forever and ever. Mary, at least, had 
never looked beyond the dull horizon of the present. Her habit 
of castle building had died out with her father’s death. What 
need had she to build castles now that he could no longer 
inhabit them? Edward Arundel, the bright boy she remem¬ 
bered in Oakley Street, the dashing young officer w ho had come 
to Marchmont Towers, had dropped back into the chaos of the 
past. Her father had been the keystone in the arch of Mary’s 
existence: he was gone and a mass of chaotic ruins alone re¬ 
mained of the familiar visions which had once beguiled her. 
The world had ended with John Marchmont’s death, and his 
daughter’s life since that great sorrow had been at best only a 
passive endurance of existence. They had heard very little of 
the young soldier at Marchmont Towers. Now and then a letter 


100 JOHN MARCH MONTHS LEGACY. 

from some member of the family at Dangerfield had come to 
the Rector of Swampington. The warfare was still raging far 
away in the East, cruel and desperate battles were being fought, 
and brave Englishmen were winning loot and laurels, or perish¬ 
ing under the cimeters of Sikhs and Afghans, as the case may 
be. Squire Arundel’s youngest son was not doing less than his 
duty, the letters said/ He had gained his captaincy, and was 
well spoken of by great soldiers, whose very names were like 
the sound of the war-trumpet to English ears. 

Olivia heard all this. She sat by her father, sometimes look¬ 
ing over his shoulder at the crumpled letter, as he read aloud to 
her of her cousin’s exploits. The familiar name seemed to be 
all ablaze with lurid light as the widow’s greedy eyes devoured 
it. How commonplace the letters were! What frivolous non¬ 
sense Letitia Arundel intermingled with the news of her brother! 
“ You’ll be glad to hear that my gray pony has got the better 
of his lameness. Papa gave a hunting-breakfast on Tuesday 
week. LordMountlichcombe was present; but the hunting-men 
are very much aggravated about the frost, and I fear w ? e shall 
have no crocuses, Edward has got his captaincy, papa told me 
to tell you; Sir Charles Napier and Major Outram have spoken 
very highly of him; but he—Edward, I mean—got a saber-cut 
on his left arm, besides a w r ound on his forehead, and was laid 
up for nearly a month. I dare say you remember old Colondl 
Tollesley, at Halburton Lodge? He died last November, and 

has left all his money to-” And the young lady ran on thus 

with such gossip as she thought might he pleasant to her uncle; 
and there were no more tidings of the young soldier, whose life 
blood had so nearly been spilt for his country’s glory. 

Olivia thought of him as she rode back to March mont Towers. 
She thought of the saber-cut upon his arm, and pictured him 
wmunded and bleeding, lying beneath the canvas shelter of a 
tent, comfortless, lonely, forsaken. 

“ Better for me if he had died,” she thought; “ better for me 
if I w r ere to hear of his death to-morrow.” 

And with the idea, the picture of such a calamity arose before 
her so vividly and hideously distinct that she thought for one 
brief moment of agony, “This is not a fancy, it is a presenti¬ 
ment; it is second sight; the thing will occur.” 

She imagined herself going to see her father as she had gone 
that morning. All w r ould be the* same: the low gray garden- 
wall of the Rectory; the ceaseless surging of the sea; the prim 
servant-maid; the familiar study, with its litter of books and 
papers; the smell of old cigar-smoke; the chintz curtains flap¬ 
ping in the open window; the dry leaves fluttering in the gar¬ 
den without. There w T ould be nothing changed except her fa¬ 
ther s face, which would be a little graver than usual. And 
then, after a little hesitation, after a brief preamble about the 
uncertainty of life, the necessity for looking always beyond 
this world, the horrors of war—the dreadful words would be 
upon his lips, when she would read all the hideous truth in his 
face, and fall prone to the ground before he could say, “Ed¬ 
ward Arundel is dead,” 



JOHN MARCH MO NT'S LOG ACT. 


101 


Yes; she felt all tlie anguish. It would be this—this sudden 
paralysis of black despair. She tested the strength of her en¬ 
durance by .this imaginary torture—scarcely imaginary, surely, 
when it seemed so real—and asked herself a strange question: 
“ Am I strong enough to bear this, or would it be less terrible 
to go on, suffering forever—forever abased and humiliated by 
the degradation of my love for a man who does not ca-e for 
me ?” 

So long as John Marchmont had lived this woman would 
have been true to the terrible victory she had won upon the eve 
of her bridal. She would have been true to herself and to her 
marriage vow; but her husband’s death, in setting her free, had 
cast her back upon the madness of her youth. It was no longer 
a sin to think of Edward Arundel. Having once suffered this 
idea to arise in her mind, her idol grew too strong for her, and 
she thought of him by night and day. 

Yes; she thought of him forever and ever. The narrow life 
to which she doomed herself, the self-immolation which she 
called duty, left her a prey to this one thought. Her work was 
not enough for her. Her powerful mind wasted and shriveled 
for want of worthy employment. It was like one vast roll of 
parchment whereon half the wisdom of the world might have 
been inscribed, but on which was only written over and over 
again, in maddening iteration, the name of Edward Arundel. 
If Olivia Marchmont could have gone to America, and entered 
herself among the feminine professors of law and medicine - if 
she could have set up a printing-press in Bloomsbury, or even 
written a novel—I think she might have been saved. The super¬ 
abundant energy of her mind would have found a new object. 
As it was, she did none of these things. She had only dreamed 
one dream, and by force of perpetual repetition the dream had 
become a madness. 

But the monotonous life was not to go on forever. The dull, 
gray, leaden sky was to be illumined by sudden bursts of sun¬ 
shine, and swept by black thunder-clouds, whose stormy vio¬ 
lence was to shake" the very universe for these two solitary 
women. 

John Marchmont had been dead nearly three years. Mary’s 
humble friend, the farmer’s daughter, had married a young 
tradesman in the village of Kemberling, a mile and a half from 
the Towers. Mary was a w oman now, and bad seen the last of 
the Roman emperors and all the dry-as-dust studies of her early 
girlhood. She had nothing to do but accompany her step¬ 
mother hither and thither among the poor cottagers about 
Kemberling and two or three other small parishes within a 
drive of the Towers, doing good, after Olivia^ fashion, by line 
and rule. At home the young lady did wdiat she pleased, sil¬ 
ting for hours together at her piano, or wading through gigantic 
achievements in the w^ay of embroidery work. She was even 
allowed to read novels now, but only such novels as were 
especially recommended to Olivia, who was one of the patron¬ 
esses of a book-club at Swampington. - 

The two women w^ent to Kemberling Church together three 


102 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEQAlCY. 

times every Sunday. It was rather monotonous; the same 
church, the same rector and curate, the same clerk, tbe same 
congregation, the same old organ-tunes and droning voices of 
Lincolnshire charity-children, the same sermons very often. 
But Mary had grown accustomed to monotony. She had 
ceased to hope or care for anything since her fathers death, 
and was very well contented to be let alone, and allowed to 
dawdle through a dreary life which was utterly without aim or 
purpose. She sat opposite her step-mother on one particular 
afternoon in the state pew at Kemberling, which was lined with 
faded red baize, and raised a little above the pews of meaner 
worshipers; she was sitting with her listless hands lying in her 
lap, looking thoughtfully at her step-mother’s stony face, and 
listening to the dull droning of the rector’s voice above her 
head. It was a sunny afternoon in early June, and the church 
was bright with a warm yellow radiance; one of the diamond- 
paned windows was open, and the tinkling of a sheep-bell far 
away in the distance, and the hum of bees in the churchyard, 
sounded pleasant in the quiet of the hot atmosphere. 

The young mistress of Marchmont Towers felt the drowsy in¬ 
fluence of that tranquil summer weather creeping stealthily upon 
her. The heavy eyelids drooped over her soft brown eyes, those 
wistful eyes which had looked so long wearily out upon a world 
in which there seemed so little joy. The rector's sermon was a 
very long one this warm afternoon, and there was a low sound 
of snoring somewhere in one of the shadowy and sheltered 
pews beneath the galleries. Mary tried very hard to keep her¬ 
self awake. Mrs. Marchmont had frowned darkly at her once 
or twice already, for to fall asleep in church was a dire iniquity 
in Olivia’s rigid creed; but the drowsiness was not easily to be 
conquered, and the girl was sinking into a peaceful slumber in 
the face of her step-mothers menacing frowns, when the sound 
of a sharp footfall on one of the gravel pathways in the church* 
yard aroused her attention. 

Heaven knows why she should have been awoke out of her 
sleep by the sound of that step. It was different, perhaps, to the 
footsteps of the Kemberling congregation. The brisk, sharp 
sound of the tread striking lightly but tirmly on the gravel, 
was not compatible with the shuffling gate of the tradespeople 
and farmers’ men who formed the greater part of the worship¬ 
ers at that quiet Lincolnshire church. Again, it would have 
been a monstrous sin in that tranquil place for any one member 
of the congregation to disturb the rest by entering at such a 
time as this. It was a stranger, then, evidently. What did it 
matter ? Miss Marchmont scarcely cared to lift her eyelids to 
see who or what the stranger was; but the intruder let in such a 
flood of June sunshine when he pushed open the ponderous 
oaken door under the church porch that she was dazzled by that 
sudden burst of light, and involuntarily opened her eyes. 

The stranger let the door swing softly to behind him, and 
6tood beneath the shadow of the porch, not caring to advance 
any further, or to disturb the congregation bv his presence. 
Mary could not @e@ him very plainly first. She could only 


JOHN MARCmrONT'S LEGACY. 


103 


dimly define the outline of his tall figure, the waving masses of 
chestnut hair tinged with gleams of gold; but, little by little, 
his face seemed to grow out of the shadow, until she saw it all 
—the handsome patrician features, the luminous bine eyes, the 
amber mustache—the face which in Oakley Street, eight years 
ago, she had elected as her type of all manly perfection, her 
ideal of heroic grace. 

Yes; it was Edward Arundel. Her eyes lighted up with an 
unwonted rapture as she looked at him; her lips parted, and her 
breath came in faint gasps. Ail the monotonous years, the ter¬ 
rible agonies of sorrow, dropped away into the past; and there 
was nothing but the present, the all-glorious present. 

The one friend of her childhood had come back. The one link, 
the almost forgotten link, that bound her to every day-dream 
of those foolish early days, was united once more by the pres¬ 
ence of the young soldier. All that happy time, nearly five 
years ago—that happy time in which the tennis-court had been 
built, and the boat-house by the river restored—those sunny 
autumn days before her fathers second marriage—returned to 
her. There was pleasure and joy in the world, after all; and 
then the memory of her father came back to her mind, and her 
eyes filled with tears. How sorry Edward would be to see his 
old friend’s empty place in the western drawing-room: how 
sorry for her and for her loss! Olivia Marchmont saw the 
change in her step-daughter’s face, and looked at her with stern 
amazement. But, after the first shock of that delicious surprise, 
Mary’s training asserted itself. She folded her hands—they 
trembled a little, but Olivia did not see that—and waited 
patiently, with her eyes cast down and a faint flush lighting up 
her pale cheeks, until the sermon was finished and the congre¬ 
gation began to disperse. She was not impatient. She felt as 
if she could have waited thus peacefully and contentedly for¬ 
ever, knowing that the only friend she had on earth was near 
her. 

Olivia was slow to leave her pew; but at last she opened the 
door and went out into the quiet aisle, followed by Mary, out 
under the shadowy porch and into the gravel-walk in the 
churchyard, where Edward Arundel was waiting for the two 
ladies. 

John March moot’s widow uttered no cry of surprise w hen she 
saw her cousin standing a little w^ay apart from the slowly dis¬ 
persing Kemberling congregation. Her dark face faded a little; 
and her heart seemed to stop its pulsation suddenly, as if she 
had been turned into stone; but this was only for a moment. 
She held out her hand to Mr. Arundel in the next instant, and 
bade him welcome to Lincolnshire. 

“ I did not know you w*ere in England,” she said. 

“ Scarcely any one knows it yet,’’ the young man answered; 
“ and I have not even been home. I came to Marchmont Tow¬ 
ers at once.” 

He turned from his cousin to Mary, who was standing a little 
behind her step-mother. 


104 JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

“ Dear Polly,” be said, taking both her bands in his, “ I was 

so Sorry for you when I beard-” 

He stopped, for he saw the tears welling up in her eyes. It 
was not his allusion to her father’s death that had distressed 
her. He had called her Polly, the old familiar name, which she 
had never heard since that dead father’s lips had last spoken it. 

The carriage was waiting at the gate of the churchyard, and 
Edward Arundel went back to Marchmont Towers with the two 
ladies He had reached the house a quarter of an hour after 
they had left it for afternoon church, and had walked over to 

“ I was so anxious to see you, Polly,” he said, “ after all this 
long time, that I had no patience to wait until you and Livy 
came back from church.” 

Olivia started as the young man said this. It was Mary 
Marchmont whom he had come to see, then; not her. Was she 
never to be anything ? Was she to be forever insulted by this 
humiliating indifference ? A dark flush came over her face, as 
she drew her head up with the air of an offended empress, and 
looked angrily at her cousin. Alas! he did not even see that in¬ 
dignant glance. He was bending over Mary, telling her in a 
low, tender voice, of the grief he had felt at learning the news 
of her father’s death. 

Olivia Marchmont looked with an eager, scrutinizing gaze at 
her step-daughter. Could it be possible that Edward Arundel 
might ever come to love this girl ? Could such a thing be pos¬ 
sible ? A hideous depth of horror and confusion seemed to open 
before her with the thought. In all the past, among all things 
she had imagined, among all the calamities she had pictured to 
herself, she had never thought of anything like this. Would 
such a thing ever come to pass? Would she ever grow to hate 
this girl—this girl, who had been intrusted to her by her dead 
husband—with the most terrible hatred that one woman could 
feel toward another ? 

In the next moment she was angry wuth herself for the abject 
folly of this new terror. She had never j et learned to think of 
Mary as a woman. She had never thought of her otherwise 
than as the pale childlike girl who had come to her meekly, day 
after day, to recite difficult lessons, standing in a submissive at¬ 
titude before her, and rendering obedience to her in all things. 
Was it likely, was if possible, that this pale faced girl would 
enter into the lists against her in the great battle of her life? 
'Was it likely that she was to find her adversary and her con 
queror here, in the meek child who had been committed to her 
charge ? 

She watched her step-daughter’s face with a jealous, hungry 
gaze. Was it beautiful ? No! The features w*ere delicate; the 
brown eyes soft and dovelike, almost lovely, now that they were 
irradiated by a new light, as they looked shyly up at Edward 
Arundel. But the girl’s face was wan and colorless. It lacked 
the splendor of beauty. It was only after you had looked at her 
for a very long time that you began to think the face rather 
pretty. 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 


105 

The five years during which Edward Arundel had been away 
had made little alteration in him. He was rather stouter, per¬ 
haps; his amber mustache thicker; his manner more dashing 
than of old. The mark of a saber-cut under the clustering 
chestnut curls upon the temple gave him a certain soldierly 
dignity. He seemed a man of the world now, and Mary 
Marchmont was rather afraid of him. He was so different to 
the Lincolnshire squires, the bashful younger sons who were 
to be educated for the church. He was so dashing, so elegant, 
so splendid! From the waving grace of his hair to the tip of 
the polished boot peeping out of his well-cut trousers (there 
were no peg-tops in 1847, and it was le genre to show very 
little of the boot), he was a creature to be wondered at, to be 
almost reverenced, Mary thought. She could not help admir¬ 
ing the cut of his coat, the easy nonchalance of his manner, 
the waxed ends of his curved mustache, the dangling toys of 
gold and enamel that jingled at his watch-chain, the waves of 
perfume that floated away from his cambric handkerchief. She 
was childish enough to worship all these external attributes of 
her hero. 

“Shall I invite him to Marchmont Towers?” Olivia thought; 
and while she was deliberating upon this question, Mary March¬ 
mont cried out: 

“You will stop at the Towers, won’t you, Mr. Arundel, as you 
did when poor papa was alive?” 

“ Most decidedly, Miss Marchmont,” the young man answered. 
“ I mean to throw myself upon your hospitality as confidingly 
as I did a long time ago in Oakley Street, when you gave me hot 
rolls for my breakfast.” 

Mary laughed aloud; perhaps for the first time since her 
father’s death. Olivia bit her lip. She was of so little account, 
then, she thought, that they did not care to consult her. A 
gloomy shadow spread itself over her face. Already, already she 
began to hate this pale-faced childish orphan girl, who seemed 
to be transformed into a new being under the spell of Edward 
Arundel’s presence. 

But she made no attempt to prevent his stopping at the 
Towers, though a word from her would have effectually hin¬ 
dered his coming. A dull torpor of despair took possession of 
her; a black apprehension paralyzed her mind. She felt that a 
pit of horror was opening before' her ignorant feet. All that she 
had suffered was as nothing to what she was about to suffer. 
Let it be, then. What could she do to keep this torture away 
from her? Let it come, since it seemed that it must come in 
some shape or other. 

She thought all this while she sat back in a corner of the car¬ 
riage watching the two faces opposite to her, as Edward and 
Mary, seated with their backs to the horses, talked together in 
low confidential tones, which scarcely reached her ear. She 
thought all this during the short drive between Kemberlingand 
Marchmont Towers; and when the carriage drew up before the 
low Tudor portico, the dark shadow had settled on her face. 
Her mind was made up, Let Eldward Arundel come; let the 


106 JOHN MARCHMONT\S LEGACY. 

worst como. She had struggled; she had tried to do hei duty, 
she had striven to be good. But her destiny was stronger than 
herself, and had brought this young soldier over land and sea, 
safe out of every danger, rescued from every peril, to be her 
destruction. I think that in this crisis of her life the last faint 
ray of Christian light faded out this lost woman’s soul, leaving 
utter darkness and desolation. The old landmarks, dimly de¬ 
scried in the weary desert, sank forever down into the quick¬ 
sands, and she was left alone—alone with her despair. Her 
jealous soul prophesied the evil which she dreaded. This man, 
whose indifference to her was almost an insult, would fall in 
love with Mary Marchmont—with Mary Marchmont, whose eyes 
lit up into new beauty under the glances of his, whose pale face 
blushed into faint bloom as he talked to her. The girl’s undis¬ 
guised admiration would flatter the young man’s vanity, and he 
would fall in love with her out of very frivolity and weakness 
of purpose. # 

“ He is weak and vain, and foolish and frivolous, I dare say, 
Olivia thought: “ and if I were to fling myself upon my knees at 
his feet, and tell him that I loved him, he would be flattered 
and grateful, and would be ready to return my affection. If I 
could tell him what this girl tells him in every look and word, 
he would be as pleased with me as he is with her.” 

Her lip curled with unutterable scorn as she thought this. 
She was so despicable to herself by the deep humiliation of her 
wasted love, that the object of that foolish passion seemed des¬ 
picable also. She was forever weighing Edward Arundel 
against all the tortures she had endured for his sake, and for¬ 
ever finding him wanting. He must have been a demi-god if 
his perfections could have outweighed so much misery; and for 
this reason she was unjust to her cousin, and could not accept 
him for that which he really was—a generous-hearted, candid, 
honorable young man—not a great man ora wonderful man—a 
brave and honest-minded soldier, very well worthy of a good 
woman’s love. 

Mr. Arundel stayed at the Towers, occupying the room which 
had been his in John Marchmont’s lifetime; and anew existence 
began for Mary. The young man was delighted with his old 
friend’s daughter. Amidst all the Calcutta belles whom he had 
danced with at Government-House balls and flirted with upon 
the Indian race-course, he could remember no one as facinating 
as this girl, who seemed as childlike now, in her early woman¬ 
hood, as she had been womanly while she was a child. Her 
naive tenderness for himself bewitched and enraptured him. 
Who could have avoided being charmed by that pure and inno¬ 
cent affection, which was as freely given by the girl of eighteen 
as it had been by the child, and was unchanged in character by 
the lapse of years ? 

The young officer had been so much admired and caressed in 
Calcutta that perhaps, by reason of his successes, he had re¬ 
turned to England heart-whole; and he abandoned himself with¬ 
out any arriere-pensee, to the quiet happiness which he felt in 
Mary Marchmont’s society. I do not say that he was intoxi- 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 


107 


cated by her beauty, which was by no means of the intoxicating 
order, or that he was madly in love with her. The gentle fas¬ 
cination of her society crept upon him before he was aware of 
its influence. He had never taken the trouble to examine his 
own feelings; they were disengaged—as free as butterflies to 
settle upon which flower might seem the fairest; and he had 
therefore no need to put himself under a course of rigorous self- 
examination. As yet he believed that the pleasure he now felt in 
Mary’s society was the same order of enjoyment he had experi¬ 
enced five years before, when he had taught her chess, and 
promised her long rambles by the sea-shore. 

They had no long rambles now in solitary lanes and under 
flowering hedgerows beside the waving green corn. Olivia 
watched them with untiring eyes. The tortures to which a 
jealous woman may condemn herself are not much greater than 
those she can inflict upon others. Mrs. Marchmont took good 
care that her ward and her cousin were not too happy. Wher¬ 
ever they went she went also; whenever they spoke she listened; 
whatever arrangement was most likely to please them was op¬ 
posed by her. Edward was not coxcomb enough to have any 
suspicions of the reason of this conduct on his cousin’s part. He 
only smiled and shrugged his shoulders, and attributed her 
watchfulness to an overstrained sense of her responsibility and 
the necessity of surveillance. 

“ Does she think me such a villain and a traitor,” he thought, 
“ that she fears to leave me alone with my dead friend’s orphan 
daughter, lest I should whisper corruption into her innocent 
ear ? How little these good women know of us, after all! What 
vulgar suspicions and narrow-minded fears influence them 
against us! Are they honorable and honest toward each other, 
I wonder, that they can entertain such pitiful doubts of our 
honor and honesty ?” 

So hour after hour and day after day Olivia Marchmont kept 
watch and ward over Edward and Mary. It was strange that 
love could blossom in such an atmosphere; it seems strange that 
the cruel gaze of those hard gray eyes did not chill the two in¬ 
nocent hearts, and prevent their free expansion. But it was not 
so. The egotism of love was all omnipotent. Neither Edward 
nor Mary was conscious of the evil light in the glance that so 
often rested upon them. The universe narrowed itself to the 
one spot of earth upon which these two stood side by side. 

Edward Arundel had been more than a month at Marchmont 
Towers when Olivia went, upon a hot July evening, to Swamp- 
ington, on a brief visit to the rector—a visit of duty. She 
would doubtless have taken Mary Marchmont with her, but the 
girl had been suffering from a violent headache throughout the 
burning summer day and had kept her room. Edward Arundel 
had gone out early in the morning upon a fishing excursion to a 
famous trout stream seven or eight miles from the Towers, and 
was not likely to return until after nightfall. There was no 
chance, therefore, of a meeting between Mary and the young 
officer, Olivia thought; no chance of any confidential talk which 
she would not be by to hear. 


108 JOHN MARCHMONT f S LEGACY. 

Did Edward Arundel love the pale-faced girl who revealed 
her devotion to him with such child-like unconsciousness? 
Olivia Marchmont had not been able to answer that question. 
She had sounded the young man several times upon his feelings 
toward her step-daughter; but he had met her hints and insin¬ 
uations with perfect frankness, declaring that Mary seemed as 
much a child to him now as she had appeared nearly nine years 
before in Oakley Street, and that the pleasure he took in her 
society was only such as he might have felt in that of any in¬ 
nocent and confiding child. 

“ Her simplicity is so bewitching, you know, Livy,” he said; 
“ she looks up in my face, and trusts me with all her little se¬ 
crets, and tells me her dreams about her dead father, and all 
her foolish, innocent fancies, as confidingly as if I were some 
play-fellow of her own age and sex. She’s so refreshing after 
the artificial belles of a Calcutta ball-room, with their stereo¬ 
typed fascinations and their complete manual of flirtation, the 
same forever and ever. She is such a pretty little spontaneous 
darling, with her soft, shy, brown eyes, and her low voice, 
which always sounds to me like the cooing of the doves in the 
poultry-yard.” 

I think that Olivia, in the depth of her gloomy despair, took 
some comfort from such speeches as these. Was this frank 
expression of regard for Mary Marchmont a token of love ? No; 
not as the widow understood the stormy madness. Love to her 
had been a dark and terrible passion, a thing to be concealed, 
as monomaniacs have sometimes contrived to keep the secret of 
their mania, until it burst forth at last, fatal and irrepressible, 
in some direful work of wreck and ruin. 

So Olivia Marchmont took an early dinner alone, and drove 
away from the Towers at four o’clock on a blazing summer aft¬ 
ernoon, more at peace perhaps than she had been since Edward 
Arundel’s coming. She paid her dutiful visit to her father, sat 
with him for some time, talked to the two old servants who 
waited upon him, walked two or three times up and down the 
neglected garden and then drove back to the Towers. 

The first object upon which her eyes fell as she entered the 
hall was Edward Arundel’s fishing-tackle lying in disorder upon 
an oaken bench near the broad arched door that opened out into 
the quadrangle. An angry flush mounted to her face as she 
turned upon the servant near her. 

“ Mr. Arundel has come home?” she said. 

“ \es, ma’am, he came in half an hour ago; but he went out 
again almost directly with Miss Marchmont.” 

“ Indeed! I thought Miss Marchmont was in her room?” 

“ No, ma’am; she came down to the drawing-room about an 
hour after you left. Her head was better, ma’am, she said.” 

“ And she went out with Mr. Arundel? Do you know which 
way they went?” 

^ s > ma’am; I heard Mr. Arundel say he wanted to look at 
the old boat-house by the river.” 

“ And they have gone there?” 

“ I think so, ma’am,” 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 109 

“Very good; I will go down to them. Miss Marchmont must 
not stop out in the night air. The dew is falling already.” 

The door leading into the quadrangle was opeu, and Olivia 
swept across the broad threshold, haughty and self-possessed, 
very stately-looking in her long black garments. She still wore 
mourning for her dead husband. What inducement had she 
ever had to cast off that somber attire ? What need to trick her¬ 
self out in gay colors ? What loving eyes would be charmed by 
her splendor? She went out of the door, across the quadrangle, 
under a stone archway, and into the low, stunted wood, which 
was gloomy even in the summer-time. The setting sun was 
shining upon the western front of the Towers; but here all 
seemed cold and desolate. The damp mists were rising from 
the sodden ground beneath the trees. The frogs were croaking 
down by the river-side. With her small, white teeth set, and 
her breath coming in fitful gasps, Olivia Marchmont hurried to 
the water’s edge, winding in and out between the trees, tearing 
her black dress among the brambles, scorning all beaten paths, 
heedless where she trod, so loug as she made her way speedily 
to the spot she wanted to reach. 

At last the black sluggish river and the old boat house came 
in sight, between a long vista of ugly, distorted trunks and 
gnarled branches of pollard oak and willow. The building was 
dreary and dilapidated-looking, for the improvements com¬ 
menced by Edward Arundel five years ago had never been fully 
carried out; but it was sufficiently substantial, and bore no 
traces of positive decay. Down by the water’s edge there was 
a great cavernous recess for the shelter of the boats, and above 
this there was a pavilion built of brick and stone, containing 
two decent-sized chambers, with latticed windows overlooking 
the river. A flight of stone steps with an iron balustrade led up 
to the door of this pavilion, which was supported upon the solid 
side-walls of the boat-house below. 

In the stillness of the summer twilight Olivia heard the voices 
of those whom she came to seek. They were standing down 
by the edge of the water, upon a narrow pathway that ran along 
by the sedgy brink of the river, and only a few paces from the 
pavilion. The door of the boat-house was open: a long-disused 
wherry lay rotting upon the damp and mossy flags. Olivia 
crept into the shadowy recess. The door that faced the river 
had fallen from its rusty hinges, and the slimy wood-work lay 
in ruins upon the threshold of the dark recess. Sheltered by the 
stone archway that had once been closed by this door, Olivia 
listened to the voices beside the still water. 

Mary Marchmont was standing close to the river's edge; Ed¬ 
ward stood beside her, leaning against the trunk of a willow that 
grew close to the water. 

“My childish darling,” the young man murmured, as if in 
reply to something his companion had said, “and so you think, 
because you are simple-minded and innocent, I am not to lov3 
you. It is your innocence I love, Polly dear—let me call you 
Polly, as I used five years ago—and I wouldn’t have you other 


110 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY\ 


wise for all the world. Do you know that sometimes I am almost 
sorry I ever came back to Marchmont Towers? 

“Sorrv vou came back?” cried Mary, in a tone of alarm. Oh, 
whv do you say that, Mr. Arundel?” 

“ Because you are an heiress to eleven thousand a year, Mary, 
and the Moated Grange behind us; and this dreary wood, and 
the river—the river is yours, I dare say, Miss Marchmont; and I 
wish you joy of the possession of so much sluggish water and so 
many square miles of swamp and fen. ’ 

“ But what then ?” Mary asked, wondenngly. 

“ What then? Do you know, Polly darling, that if Iask you 
to marry me people will call me a fortune-hunter, and declare 
that I came to Marchmont Towers bent upon stealing its heir¬ 
ess’ innocent heart before she had learned the value of the 
estate that must go along with it ? God knows they’d wrong 
me, Polly, as cruelly as ever an honest man was wronged; for, 
so long as I have money to pay my tailor and tobacconist— 
and I’ve more than enough for both of them—I want nothing 
further of the world’s wealth. What should I do with all this 
swamp and fen, Miss Marchmont-*-with all that horrible com¬ 
plication of expired leases to be renewed, and income-taxes to 
be appealed against, that rich people have to endure? If you 
• were not rich, Polly, 1-” 

He stopped and laughed, striking the toe of his boot among 
the weeds, and knocking the pebbles into the water. The 
woman crouching in the shadow of the archway listened with 
whitened cheeks and glaring eyes; listened as she might have 
listened to the sentence of her death, drinking in every syllable, 
in her ravenous desire to lose no breath that told her of her 


anguish. 

“ If I were not rich!” murmured Mary; “ what if I were not 
rich?” 

“ I should tell you how dearly I love you, Polly, and ask you 
to be my wife by and by.” 

The girl looked up at him for a few moments in silence, 
shyly at first, and then more boldly, with a beautiful light 
kindling in her eyes. 

“I love you dearly too, Mr. Arundel,” she said, at last; “ and 
I would rather you had my money than any one else in the 
world; and there was something in papa’s will that made me 
think-” 

“He would wish this, Polly,” cried the young man, clasping 
the trembling little figure to his breast. “ Mr. Paulette sent me 
a copy of the will, Polly, when he sent my diamond ring; and 
I think there were some words in it that hinted at such a wish. 
Your father said he left me this legacy, darling—I have his let¬ 
ter still—the legacy of a helpless girl. God knows 1 will try 
to be worthy of such a trust, Mary dearest, God knows I will 
be faithful to my promise; made nine years ago.” 

The woman listening in the dark archway sank down upon 
the damp flags at her feet, among the slimy rotten wood and 
rusty iron nails and hinges. She sat there for a long time, not 
unconscious, but quite motionless, her white face leaning 


JOHN MAR OHM ONT ’S LEGACY. 


Ill 


against the moss-grown arch, staring blankly out of the black 
shadows. She sat there and listened, while the lovers talked 
in low tender murmurs of the sorrowful past and of the un¬ 
known future; the beautiful untrodden region, in which they 
were to go hand in hand through all the long years of quiet hap¬ 
piness between that moment and the grave. She sat and list¬ 
ened till the moonlight faintly shimmered upoD the water, and 
the footsteps of the lovers died away upon the narrow pathway 
by which they went back to the house. 

Olivia Marchmont did not move until an hour after they had 
gone. Then she raised herself with an effort, and walked with 
stiffened limbs slowly and painfully to the house and to her own 
room, where she locked her door and flung herself upon the 
ground in the darkness. 

Mary came to her to ask why she did not come to the draw¬ 
ing-room, and Mrs. Marchmont answered, with a hoarse voice, 
that she was ill, and wished to be alone. Neither Mary nor the 
old woman-servant who had nursed Olivia, and had some little 
influence over her, could get any other answer than this. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

DRIVEN AWAY. 

Mary Marchmont and Edward Arundel were happy. They 
were happy; and how should they guess at the tortures of that 
desperate woman, whose benighted soul was plunged in a black 
gulf of horror by reason of their innocent love ? How should 
these two—very children in their ignorance of all stormy pas¬ 
sions, all direful emotions—know that in the darkened chamber 
where Olivia Marchmont lay, suffering under some vague ill¬ 
ness, for which the Swampington doctor was fain to prescribe 
quinine, in utter unconsciousness as to the real nature of the 
disease which he was called upon to cure—how should they 
know that in that gloomy chamber a wicked heart was aban¬ 
doning itself to all the devils that had so long held patient 
watch for tin's day ? 

Yes, the struggle was over. Olivia Marchmont flung aside 
the cross she had borne in dull, mechanical obedience, rather 
than in Christian love and truth. Better to have been sorrowful 
Magdalene, forgiven for her love and tears, than this cold, 
haughty, stainless woman, who had never been able to learn 
the sublime lessons which so many sinners have taken meekly 
to heart. The religion which was wanting in the vital prin¬ 
ciple of Christianity, the faith which showed itself only in 
dogged obedience, failed this woman in the hour of her agony. 
Her pride arose; the defiant spirit of the fallen angel asserted 
its gloomy grandeur. 

“What have I done that I should suffer like this?” she 
thought. “What am I that an empty-headed soldier should 
despise me, and that I should go mad because of his indiffer¬ 
ence? Is this the recompense for my long years of obedience? 
Is this the reward Heaven bestows upon me for my life of 
duty?” 


112 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

She remembered the histories of other women—women who 
had gone their own way, and had been happy; and a darker 
question arose in her mind, almost the question which Job asked 
in bis agony. . _ ~ 

“ If there neither truth nor justice in the dealings of Hod, 
she thought. “ Is it useless to be obedient and submissive, pa¬ 
tient and untiring? Has all my life been a great mistake, which 
is to end in confusion and despair?” 

And then she pictured to herself the life that might have been 
hers if Edward Arundel had loved her. How good she would 
have been! The hardness of her iron nature would have been 
melted and subdued in the depth of her love and tenderness for 
him. She would have learned to be loving and tender to others. 
Her wealth of affection for him would have overflowed in gen¬ 
tleness and consideration for every creature in the universe. 
The lurking bitterness which had lain bidden in her heart ever 
since she had first loved Edward Arundel, and first discovered 
his indifference to her: and the poisonous envy of happier 
women, who had loved and were beloved—would have been 
blotted away. Her whole nature would have undergone a 
wondrous transfiguration, purified and exalted by the strength 
of her affection. All this might have come to pass if he had 
loved her—if he had only loved her. But a pale-faced child had 
come between her and this redemption, and there was nothing 
left for her but despair. 

Nothing but despair? Yes; perhaps something further—re¬ 
venge. 

But this last idea took no tangible shape. She only knew that 
in the black darkness of the gulf into which her soul had gone 
down there was far away, somewhere, one. ray of lurid light. 
She only knew this as yet, and that she hated Mary Marchmont 
with a mad and wicked hatred. If she could have thought 
meanly of Edward Arundel—if she could have believed him to 
be actuated by mercenary motives in his choice of the orphan 
girl—she might have taken some comfort from the thought of 
his unworthiness, and of Mary’s probable sorrow in the days to 
come. But she could not think of this. Little as the young 
soldier had said in the summer twilight beside the river, there 
had been that in his tones and looks that had convinced the 
wretched watcher of his truth. Mary might have been deceived 
by the shallowest pretender; but Olivia’s eyes devoured every 
giance; Olivia’s greedy ears drank in every tone; and she knew 
that Edward Arundel loved her step-daughter. 

She knew this, and she hated Mary Marchmont. What had 
she done, this girl who had never known what it was to fight a 
battle with her own rebellious heart-'-what had she done, that 
all this wealth of love and happiness should drop into her lap 
unsought—comparatively unvalued, perhaps? 

John Marchmont’s widow lay in her darkened chamber, think¬ 
ing over these things; no longer fighting the battle with her own 
heart, but utterly abandoning herself to her desperation—reck¬ 
less, hardened, impenitent. 

Edward Arundel could not very well remain at the Towers 


113 


JOHN MARCHM ONT *S LEGACY. 

while the reputed illness of his hostess kept her to her room. 
He went over to Swampington, therefore, upon a dutiful visit 
to his uncle; but rode to the Towers every day to inquire very 
particularly after his cousin’s progress, and to dawdle on the 
sunny western terrace with Mary March mont. 

Their innocent happiness needs little description. Edward 
Arundel retained a good deal of that boyish chivalry which had 
made him so eager to become the little girl’s champion in the 
days gone by. Contact with the world had not much sullied 
the freshness of the young man’s spirit. He loved his innocent, 
childish companion with the purest and truest devotion; and he 
was proud of the recollection that in the day of his poverty 
John Marchmont had chosen him as the future shelterer of this 
tender blossom. 

“ You must never grow any older or more womanly, Polly,” 
he said sometimes to the young mistress of Marchmont Towers. 
“ Remember that I always love you best when I think of you as 
the little girl in the shabby pinafore, who poured out my tea 
for me one bleak December morning in Oakley Street.” 

They talked a great deal of John Marchmont. It was such a 
happiness to Mary to be able to talk unreservedly of her father 
to some one who had loved and comprehended him. 

“My step mamma was very good to poor papa, you know, 
Edward,” she said; “and of course he was very grateful to her; 
but I don’t think he ever loved her quite as be loved you. You 
were the friend of bis poverty, Edward; he never forgot that.” 

Once, as they strolled side by side together upon the terrace 
in the warm summer noontide, Mary Marchmont put her little 
hand through her lover’s arm, and looked up shyly in his face. 

“ Did papa say that, Edward ?” she whispered; “ did he really 
sav that ?” 

“ Did he really say what, darling?” 

“ That he left me to you as a legacy ?” 

“ He did indeed, Polly,” answered the young man; “ I’ll bring 
you the letter to-morrow.” 

And the next day he showed Mary Marchmont the yellow 
sheet of letter-paper and the faded writing, which had once 
been black and wet under her dead father’s hand. Mary looked 
through her tears at the old familiar Oakley Street address, and 
the date of the very day upon which Edward Arundel had 
breakfasted in the shabby lodging. Yes; there were the words: 
“ The legacy of a child's helplessness is the only bequest I can 
leave to the only friend I have.” 

“And you shall never know what it is to be helpless while I 
am near you, Polly, darling,” the soldier said, as he refolded his 
dead friend’s epistle. “You may defy your enemies hence¬ 
forward, Mary; if you have any enemies. Oh, by the bye, you 
have never heard anything of that Paul Marchmont, I suppose ?” 

“ Papa’s cousin, Mr. Marchmont the artist?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ He came to the reading of papa’s will.” 

“ Indeed! and did you see much of him ?” 

“ Oh, no, very little. I was ill, you know,” the girl added, 


114 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 



Marchmont 
said.” . 

“ And he has never been here since r 
•* Never.'’ 

Edward Arundel shrugged his shoulders. This Paul March- 
in on t could not be such a designing villain, after all, or surely he 
would have tried to push his acquaintance with his rich cousin. 

“ I dare say John’s suspicions of him was only one of the poor 
fellow’s morbid fancies,” he thought. “ He was always full of 
morbid fancies.” 

Mrs. Marchmont’s rooms were in the western front ot the 
house: and through her open windows she heard the fresh young 
voices of the lovers, as they strolled up and down the terrace. 
The cavalrv officer was content to carry a watering-pot full of 
water for the refreshment of his young mistress’ geraniums in 
the stone vases on the balustrade, and to do other under-gar¬ 
dener’s work for her pleasure. He talked to her of the Indian 
campaign: and she asked a hundred questions about midnight 
inarches and solitary encampments, fainting camels, lurking 
tigers in the darkness of the jungle, intercepted supplies of pro¬ 
visions, stolen ammunition, and all the other details of the war. 

Olivia rose at last, before the Swampington surgeon’s saline 
draughts and quinine mixture had subdued the fiery light in her 
eyes, or cooled the raging fever that devoured her. She arose 
because she could no longer lie still in her desolation, knowing 
that for two hours in each long summer’s day Edward Arundel 
and Mary Marchmont could be happy together in spite of her. 
She came down-stairs, therefore, and renewed her watch, 
chaining her step-daughter to her side, and interposing herself 
forever between the lovers. 

The widow arose from her sick-bed an altered woman, as it 
appeared to all who knew her. A mad excitement seemed to 
have taken sudden possession of her. She flung off her mourn¬ 
ing-garments, and ordered silks and laces, velvets and satins, 
from a London milliner; she complained of the absence of 
society, the monotonous dullness of her Lincolnshire life; and, 
to the surprise of every one, sent out cards of invitation for a 
ball at the Towers in honor of Edward Arundel’s return to Eng¬ 
land. She seemed to be seized with a desire to do something, 
she scarcely cared what, to disturb the even current of her days. 

During the brief interval between Mrs. Marcbmont’s leaving 
her room and the evening appointed for the ball, Edward Arun¬ 
del found no very convenient opportunity of informing his 
< ousin of the engagement entered into between himself and 
Mary. He had no wish to hurry the disclosure; for there was 
something in the orphan girl’s childishness and innocence that 
kept all definite ideas of an early marriage very far away from 
her lover’s mind. He wanted to go back to India and win more 
laurels, to lay at the feet of the mistress of Marchmont Towers. 
He wanted to make a name for himself, which should cause the 
world to forget that he was a younger sou—a name that the 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 115 

vilest tongue would never dare to blacken with the epithet of 
fortune-hunter. 

The young man was silent, therefore, waiting for a fitting op¬ 
portunity in which to speak to Mary’s step-mother. Perhaps lie 
lather dreaded the idea of discussing his attachment with 
Olivia: for she had looked at him with cold, angry eyes, and a 
brow as black as thunder, upon those occasions on which she 
had sounded him as to his feelings for Mary. 

“ She wants poor Polly to marry some grandee, I dare say,” 
he thought; “and will do all she can to oppose my suit. But 
her trust will cease with Mary’s majority; and I don’t want my 
confiding little darling to marry me until she is old enough to 
choose wisely. She will be one and-twenty in three years; and 
what are three years? I would wait as long as Jacob for my 
pet, and serve my fourteen, years’ apprenticeship under Sir 
Charles Napier, and be true to her all the time.” 

Olivia Marchmont hated her step-daughter. Mary was not 
slow to perceive the change in the widow’s manner toward her. 
It had always been cold, and sometimes severe; but it was now 
almost abhorrent. The girl shrank appalled from the sinister 
light in her step-mother’s gray eyes, as she followed her unceas¬ 
ingly, dogging her footsteps with a hungry and evil gaze. The 
gentle girl wondered what she had done to offend her guardian, 
and then, being unable to think of any possible delinquency 
by which she might have incurred Mrs. Marchmont’s displeas¬ 
ure, was fain to attribute the change in Olivia’s manner to the 
irritation consequent upon her illness, and was thus more gentle 
and more submissive than of old; enduring cruel looks, return¬ 
ing no answer to bitter speeches, but striving to conciliate the 
supposed invalid by her s weetness and obedience. 

But the girl’s amiability only irritated the despairing woman. 
Her jealousy fed upon every charm of the rival who had sup¬ 
planted her. That fatal passion fed upon Edward Arundel’s 
every look and tone, upon the quiet smile which rested on Mary’s 
face as the girl sat over her embroidery, in meek silence think¬ 
ing of her lover. The self-tortures which Olivia Marchmont in¬ 
flicted upon herself were so horrible to bear that she turned, 
with a mad desire for relief, upon those she had the power to 
torture. Day by day and hour by hour she contrived to distress 
the gentle girl, who had so long obeyed her, now by a word, 
now by a look, but always with that subtle power of aggrava¬ 
tion which women possess in such an eminent degree, until 
Mary March mont’s life became a burden to her—or would have 
so become, but for that inexpressible happiness, of which her 
tormentor could not deprive her—the joy she felt in her knowl¬ 
edge of Edward Arundel’s love. 

She was very careful to keep the secret of her step-mother’s 
altered manner from the young soldier. Olivia was his cousin, 
and he I.ad said long ago that she was to love her. Heaven 
knows she had tried to do so, and had failed most miserably; 
but her belief in Olivia’s goodness was still unshaken. If Mrs. 
Marchmont was now’ irritable, capricious, and even cruel, there 
was doubtless some good reason for the alteration in her cop- 


116 


JOHN MARCHMOtiTS LEGACY. 

duct, and it was Mary’s duty to be patient. The orphan-girl 
bad learned to suffer quietly when the great affliction of her 
fathers death had fallen upon her; and she suffered so quietly 
now, that even her lover failed to perceive any symptoms of her 
distress. How could she grieve him by telling him of her sor¬ 
row, when his very presence brought such unutterable joy to 
her? 

So, on the morning of the ball at Marchmont Towers—the 
first entertainment of the kind that had been given in that grim 
Lincolnshire mansion since young Arthur Marchmont’s untimely 
death—Mary sat in her room with her old friend Farmer Pol¬ 
lard’s daughter—who was now Mrs. Mapleson, the wife of the 
most prosperous carpenter in Kemberling. Hester had come up 
to the Towers to pay a dutiful visit to her young patroness: and 
upon this particular occasion Olivia had not cared to prevent 
Mary and her humble friend spending half an hour together. 
Mrs. Marchmont roamed from room to room upon this day, with 
a perpetual restlessness. Edward Arundel was to dine at the 
Towers, was to sleep there after the ball. He was to drive his 
uncle over from Swampington, as the rector had promised to 
show himself for an hour or two at his daughter’s entertain¬ 
ment. Mary had met her mother several times that morning in 
the corridors and on the staircase; but the widow had passed 
her in silence, with a dark face, and a shivering, almost abhor¬ 
rent gesture. 

The bright July day dragged itself out at last, witn hideous 
slowness for the desperate woman, who could not find peace or 
rest in all those splendid rooms, on all that grassy flat, dry and 
burning under the blazing summer sun. She had wandered out 
upon the waste of barren turf, with her head bared to the hot 
sky, and had loitered here and there by the still pools, looking 
gloomily at the black, tideless water, and wondering what the 
agony of drowning was like. Not that she had any thought of 
killing herself. No; the idea of death was horrible to her; for 
after her death Edward and Mary would be happy. Could she 
ever find rest in the grave knowing this? Could there be any 
possible extinction that would blot out her jealous fury ? Surely 
the fire of her hate—it was no longer love, but hate, that raged 
in her heart—would defy annihilation, eternal by reason of its 
intensity. When the dinner-hour came, and Edward and his 
uncle arrived at the Towers, Olivia Marchmont’s pale face was 
lit up with eyes that flamed like fire; but she took her accus¬ 
tomed place very quietly, with her father opposite to her, and 
Mary and Edward upon either side. 

“ I’m sure you’re ill, Livy,” the young man said; “ you’re as 
pale as death, and your hand is dry and burning. I’m afraid 
you’ve not been obedient to the Swampington doctor.” 

Mrs. Marchmont shrugged her shoulders with a short con¬ 
temptuous laugh. 

“Iam well enough,” she said. “Who cares whether I am 
well or ill ?” 

Her father looked up at her in mute surprise. The bitterness 
of her tone startled and alarmed him; but Mary never lifted her 


JOHN MARCBMONT'S LEGACY. lit 

eyes. It was in such a tone as this that her step-mother had 
spoken constantly of late. 

But two or three hours afterward, when the flats before the 
house were silvered by the moonlight, and the long ranges of 
windows glittered with the lamps within, Mrs. Marchmont 
emerged from her dressing-room another creature as it seemed. 

Edward and his uncle were walking up and down the great 
oaken banqueting-hall, which had been decorated and fitted up 
as a ball-room for the occasion, when Olivia crossed the wide 
threshold of the chamber. The young officer looked up with an 
involuntary expression of surprise. In all his acquaintance with 
his cousin lie had never seen her look thus. The gloomy, black- 
robed woman was transformed into a Semiramis. She wore 
a voluminous dress of a deep claret-colored velvet, that 
glowed with the warm hue of rich wine in the lamplight. Her 
massive hair was coiled in a knot at the back of the head, and 
diamonds glittered amidst the thick bands that framed her broad 
white brow. Her stern classical beauty was lit up by the un¬ 
wonted splendor of her dress, and asserted itself as obviously as 
if she had said, ,4 Am I woman to be despised for the love of a 
pale-faced child ?” 

Mary Marchmont came into the room a few minutes after her 
step-mother. Her lover ran to welcome her, and looked fondly 
at her simple dress of shadowy white crape, and the pearl circlets 
that crowned her soft brown hair. The pearls she wore upon 
this night had been given to her by her father on her fourteenth 
birthday. 

Olivia watched the young man as he bent over Mary March¬ 
mont. 

He wore bis uniform to-night for the special gratification of 
his young mistress, and he was looking down with a tender 
smile at her childish admiration of the bullion ornaments upon 
his coat, and the decoration he had won in India. 

The widow looked from the two lovers to an antique glass 
upon an ebony bureau in a niche opposite to her, which re¬ 
flected her own face—her own face, more beautiful than she 
had ever seen it before, with a feverish glow of vivid crimson 
lighting up her hollow cheeks. 

“I might have been beautiful if he had loved me,” she 
thought; and then she turned to her father, and began to talk 
to him of his parishioners, the old pensioners upon her bounty, 
whose little histories were so hatefully familiar to her. Once 
more she made a feeble effort to tread the old hackneyed path¬ 
way, which she had toiled upon with such weary feet; but she 
could not—she could not. After a few minutes she turned 
away abruptly from her father and seated herself in a recess of 
the window, from which she could see Edw’ard and Mary. 

But Mrs. Marchmont’s duties as hostess soon demanded her 
attention. The county families began to arrive, the sound of 
carriage-wheels seemed perpetual upon the crisp gravel-drive 
before the western front, the names of half the great people in 
Lincolnshire were shouted by the old servants in the hall. The 
band in the music-gallery struck up a quadrille, and Edward 


118 JOHN MAROHMONT’S LEGACY. 

Arundel led the youthful mistress of the mansion to her place 

in the dance. . 

To Olivia that long night seemed all glare and noise and con¬ 
fusion. She did the honors of the ball-room, she received her 
guest 3 , she meted out due attention to all; for she had been ac¬ 
customed from her earliest girlhood to the stereotyped round of 
country society. She neglected no duty; but she did all me¬ 
chanically, scarcely knowing what she said or did in the fever¬ 
ish tumult of her soul. „ 

Yet, amidst all the bewilderment of her senses, in all the 
confusion of her thoughts, two figures were always before her. 
Wherever Edward Arundel and Mary Marchmont went her 
eyes followed them, her fevered imagination pursued them. 
Once, and once only, in the course of that long night, she spoke 
to her step-daughter. 

“ How often do you mean to dance with Captain Arundel, 
Miss Marchmont ?” she said. 

But before Mary could answer, her step-mother had moved 
away upon the arm of a portly country squire, and the girl 
was left in sorrowful wonderment as to the reason of Mrs. 
March mont’s angry tone. 

Edward and Mary were standing in one of the deep embayed 
windows of the banqueting-hall when the dancers began to dis¬ 
perse, long after supper. The girl had been very happy that 
evening, in spite of her step-mother’s bitter words and disdain¬ 
ful glances. For almost the first time in her life the young mis¬ 
tress of Marchmont Towers had felt the contagious influence of 
other people’s happiness. The brilliantly-lighted ball-room, the 
splendid dresses of the dancers, the joyous music, the low sound 
of suppressed laughter, the bright faces which smiled at each 
other upon every side, were as new as anything in fairyland to 
this girl, whose narrow life had been overshadowed by the. 
gloomy figure of her step-mother forever interposed between 
her and the outer world. The young spirit arose and shook off 
its fetters, fresh and radiant as the butterfly that escapes from 
its chrysalis-shell. The new light of happiness illumined the 
orphan’s delicate face, until Edward Arundel began to wonder 
at her loveliness, as he had wondered once before that night at 
the fiery splendor of his cousin Olivia. 

“ I had no idea that Olivia was so handsome, or you so pretty, 
my darling,” he said, as he stood with Mary in the embrasure 
of the window. “You look like Titania, the queen of the 
fairies, Polly, with your cloudy draperies and crown of pearls.” 

The window was open, and Captain Arundel looked wistfully 
at the broad flagged ^quadrangle, beautified by the light of the 
full summer moon. He glanced back into the room; it w ? as 
nearly empty now; and Mrs. Marchmont was standing near the 
principal doorway, bidding the last of her guests good-night. 

Come into the quadrangle, Polly,” he said, “ and take a turn 
with me under the colonnade. It was a cloister once, I dare 
say, in the good old days, before Harry the Eighth was king; 
and cowled monks have paced up and down under its shadow, 
muttering mechanical prayers, as the beads of their rosaries 


JOHN MARCHMONT*8 LEGACY. 


119 


dropped slowly through their shriveled old fingers. Come out 
into the quadrangle. Polly; all the people we know or care about 
are gone, and we’ll go out and walk in the moonlight, as true 
lovers ought.” 

The soldier led his young companion across the threshold of 
the window, and out into a cloister-like colonnade that ran along 
one side of the house. The shadows of the Gothic pillars were 
black upon the moonlit flags of the quadrangle, which was as 
light now as in the day; but a pleasant obscurity reigned in the 
sheltered colonnade. 

“ I think this little bit of pre-Lutherean masonry is the 
best of all your possessions, Polly,” the young man said, laugh¬ 
ing. “By and by, when I come home from India a general, as 
I mean to do, Miss Marchmont, before I ask you to become Mrs. 
Arundel, I shall stroll up and down here in the still summer 
evenings smoking my cheroots. You will let me smoke out of 
doors, won’t you, Polly ? But suppose I should leave some of my 
limbs on the banks of the Sutlej, and come limping home to you 
with a wooden leg, would you have me then. Mary; or would 
you dismiss me with ignominy from your sweet presence, and 
shut the doors of your stony |mansion §upon myself and my 
calamities ? Pm afraid, from your admiration of my gold epau¬ 
lets and silk sash, that glory in the abstract would have very 
little attraction for you.” 

Mary Marchmont looked up at her lover with widely-opened 
and wondering eyes, and the clasp of her hand tightened a little 
upon his arm. 

“ There is nothing that could ever happen to you that would 
make me love you less now ,” she said, naively. “I dare say at 
first I liked you a little because you were handsome, and differ¬ 
ent to every one else I had ever seen. You were so very hand¬ 
some, you know,” she added, apologetically; “ but it was not 
because of that only that I loved you; I loved you because papa 
told me you were good and generous, and his true friend when 
he was in cruel need of a friend. Yes, you were his friend at 
school, when your cousin, Martin Mostyu, and the other pupils 
sneered at him and ridiculed him. How can I ever forget that, 
Edward? How can I ever love you enough to repay you for 
that?” In the enthusiasm of her innocent devotion she lifted 
her pure young brow, and the soldier bent down and kissed that 
white throne of all virginal thoughts, as the lovers stood side by 
side, half in the moonlight, half in the shadow. 

Olivia Marchmont came into the embrasure of the open win¬ 
dow, and took her place there to watch them. 

She came again 10 the torture. From the. remotest end of the 
long banqueting-room she had seen the two figures glide out 
into the moonlight. She had seen them, and had gone on with 
her courteous speeches, and had repeated her formula of hospi¬ 
tality, with the fire in her heart devouring and consuming her. 
She came again, to watch and listen, and to endure her self-im¬ 
posed agonies, as mad and foolish in her fatal passion as some 
besotted wretch who should come willingly to the wheel upon 
which his limbs had been well-nigh broken, and supplicate for a 


120 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEG ACT. 

renewal of the torture. She stood rigid and motionless in the 
shadow of the arched window, hiding herself, as she had hidden 
in the dark, cavernous recess by the river; she stood and listened 
to all the childish babble of the lovers as they loitered up and 
down the vaulted cloister. How she despised them in the 
haughty superiority of an intellect which might have planned a 
revolution or saved a sinking state! 

What bitter scorn curled her lip as their foolish talk fell upon 
her ear! They talked like Florizel and Perdita, like Romeo and 
Juliet, like Paul and Virginia, and they talked a good deal of non¬ 
sense, no doubt; soft, harmonious foolishness, with little more 
meaning in it than there is in the cooing of doves, but tender 
and musical, and more than beautiful, to each other’s ears. A 
tigress, famished and desolate, and but lately robbed of her 
whelps, would not be likely to listen very patiently to the com¬ 
muning of a pair of prosperous ring-doves. Olivia Marchmont 
listened with her brain on fire, and the spirit of a murderess 
raging in her breast. What was she that she should be patient ? 
All the world was lost to her. She was thirty years of age, and 
she had never yet won the love of any human being. She was 
thirty years of age, and all the sublime world of affection was 
a dismal blank for her. From the outer darkness in which she 
stood she looked with wild and ignorant yearning into that 
bright region which her accursed foot had never trodden, and 
saw Mary Marchmont wandering hand in hand with the only 
man she could have loved, the only creature who had ever had 
the power to awake the instinct of womanhood in her soul. 

She stood and waited until the clock in the quadrangle struck 
the first quarter after three: the moon was fading out, and the 
colder light of early morning glimmered in the eastern sky. 

“ I mustn’t keep you out here any longer, Polly,” Captain 
Arundel said, pausing near the window. “It’s getting cold, 
my dear, and it’s high time the mistress of Marchmont should 
retire to her stony bower. Good-night, and God bless you, my 
darling! I’ll stop in the quadrangle and smoke a cheroot before 
I go to my room. Your step-mamma will be wondering what 
has become of you, Mary, and we shall have a lecture upon the 
proprieties to-morrow; so, once more, good-night.” 

He kissed the fair young brow under the coronal of pearls, 
stopped to w T atch Mary while she crossed the threshold of the 
open window, and then strolled away into the flagged court with 
his cigar-case in his hand. 

Olivia Marchmont stood a few paces from the window when 
her step-daughter entered the room, and Mary paused involun¬ 
tarily, terrified by the cruel aspect of the face that frowned upon 
her: terrified by something that she had never seen before—the 
horrible darkness that overshadows the souls of the lost. 

“Mamma!” the girl cried, clasping her hands in sudden af¬ 
fright, “ mamma! why do you look at me like that ? Why have 
you been so changed to me lately ? I cannot tell you how un¬ 
happy I have been. Mamma, mamma, what have I done to 
offend you?” 

Olivia Marchmont grasped the trembling hands uplifted en- 


JOHN MARCH.UONT’S LEGACY. 


121 


treatingly to her and held them in her own—held them as if in 
a vise. She stood thus, with her step-daughter pinioned in her 
grasp, and her eyes fixed upon the girl’s face. Two streams of 
. lurid light seemed to emanate from those dilated gray eyes; two 
spots ot‘ crimson blazed in the widow’s hollow cheeks. 

“ What have you done?” she cried. “Do you think I have 
toiled for nothing to do the duty which 1 promised my dead hus¬ 
band to perform for your sake ? Has all my care of you been so 
little, that I am to stand by now and be silent, when I see what 
you are? Do you think that T am blind, or deaf, or besotted, 
that you defy me and outrage me, day by day, and hour by 
hour, by your conduct ?” 

“ Mamma, mamma, what do you mean ?” 

“Heaven knows how rigidly you have been educated; how 
carefully you have been secluded from all society, and sheltered 
from every influence, lest harm or danger should come to you. 
I have done my duty and I wash ray hands of you. The debas¬ 
ing taint of your mother’s low breeding reveals itself in your 
every action. You run after my cousin Edward Arundel, and 
advertise your admiration of him to himself and every creature 
who knows you. You fling yourself into his arms, and offer 
him yourself and your fortune; and in your low cunning try to 
keep the secret from me, your protectress and guardian, ap¬ 
pointed by the dead father whom you pretend to have loved so 
dearly.” 

Olivia Marchmont still held her step-daughter’s wrists in her 
iron grasp. The girl stared wildly at her with her eyes dis¬ 
tended, her trembling lips apart. She began to think that the 
widow had gone mad. 

“I blush for you, I am ashamed of you,” cried Olivia. It 
seemed as if the torrent of her words burst forth almost in spite 
of herself. “ There is not a village-girl in Kemberling, there is 
not a scullery-maid in this house, who would have behaved as 
you have done. I have watched you, Mary Marchmont, remem¬ 
ber, and I know all. I know your wanderings down by the 
riverside. I heard you. Yes, by the Heaven above me, I heard 
you offer yourself to my cousin.” 

Mary drew herself up with an indignant gesture, and over the 
whiteness of her face there swept a sudden glow of vivid crim¬ 
son that faded as quickly as it came. Her submissive nature re¬ 
volted against her step-mother’s horrible tyranny. The dignity 
of innocence arose and asserted itself against Olivia’s shameful 
upbraiding. 

“ If I offered myself to Edward Arundel, mamma,” she said, 
“it was because we love each other very truly, and because I 
think and believe papa wished me to marry his old friend.” 

“Because we love each other very truly!” Olivia echoed, in a 
tone of unmitigated scorn. “ You can answer for Captain 
Arundel’s heart, I suppose, then, as well as for your own ? You 
must have a tolerably good opinion of yourself, Miss Marchmont, 
to be able to venture so much. Bah!” she cried, suddenly, with 
a disdainful gesture of her head; “do you think your pitiful 
face has won Edward Arundel ? Do you think he has not hac| 


122 


JOHN MARCHMONTS LEGACY. 


women fifty times your superior, in every quality of mind and 
body, at his feet out yonder in India ? Are you idiotic and be¬ 
sotted enough to believe that it is anything but your fortune this 
man cares for? Do you know the vile things people will do. the 
lies they will tell, the base comedies of guilt and falsehood they 
will act, for the love of eleven thousand a year ? And you think 
that he loves you! Child, dupe, fool, are you weak enough to 
be deluded by a fortune-hunter's pretty pastoral flatteries? 
Are you weak enough to be duped by a man of the world, worn 
out and jaded, no doubt, as to the world's pleasures; in debt, 
perhaps, and in pressing need of money; who comes here to try 
and redeem his fortunes by a marriage with a semi imbecile 
heiress ?” 

Olivia Marchmont released her hold of the shrinking girl, who 
seemed to have become transfixed to the spot upon which she 
stood, a pale statue of horror and despair. 

The iron will of the strong and resolute woman rode rough¬ 
shod over the simple confidence of the ignorant girl. Until this 
moment Mary Marchmont had believed in Edward Arundel as 
implicitly as she had trusted in her dead father. But now, for 
the first time, a dreadful region of doubt opened before her; the 
foundations of her world reeled beneath her feet. Edward 
Arundel a fortune-hunter! This woman, whom she had obeyed 
for five weary years, and who had acquired that ascendency over 
her which a determined and vigorous nature must always exer¬ 
cise over a morbidly sensitive disposition, told her that she had 
been deluded. This woman laughed aloud in bitter scorn of her 
credulity. This woman, who could have no possible motive for 
torturing her, and who was known to be scrupulously conscien¬ 
tious in all her dealiugs, told her, as plainly as the most cruel 
words could tell a cruel truth, that her own charms could not 
have won Edward Arundel’s affection. 

All the beautiful day dreams of her life melted away from her. 
She bad never questioned herself as to her worthiness of her 
lover’s devotion. She had accepted it as she accepted the sun¬ 
shine and the starlight, as something beautiful and incompre¬ 
hensible, that came to her by the beneficence of God, and not 
through any merits of her own. But as the fabric of her hap¬ 
piness dwindled away, the fatal spell exercised over the girl’s 
weak nature by Olivia’s violent words evoked a hundred doubts. 
How should he love her ? Why should he love her in prefer¬ 
ence to every other woman in the world ? Set any woman to 
ask herself this question, and you fill her mind with a thousand 
suspicions, a thousand jealous doubts of her lover, though he 
were the truest and noblest in the universe. 

Olivia Marchmont stood a few paces from her step-daughter, 
watching her while the black shadow of doubt blotted every joy 
from her heart, and utter despair crept slowlv into her innocent 
breast. The widow expected that the girl’s* self-esteem would 
assert itself; that she would contradict and defy the traducer of 
her lover s truth; but it was not so. When Mary spoke again 
her voice was low and subdued, her manner as submissive as it 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 123 

had been two or three years before, when she had stood before 
her step-mother, waiting to repeat some difficult lesson. 

“ I dare say you are right, mamma,” she said, in a low dreamy 
tone, looking, not at her step-mother, but straight before her 
into vacancy, as if her tearless eyes were transfixed by the vision 
of all her shattered hopes, filling with wreck and min the deso¬ 
late foreground of a blank future. “ 1 dare say you are right, 
mamma; it was very foolish of me to think that Edward—that 
Captain Arundel could care for me, for—for—my own sake; but 
if—if he wants my fortune, I should wish him to have it. The 
money will never be any good to me, you know, mamma; and 
he was so kind to papa in his poverty—so kind. I will never, 
never believe anything against him; but I couldn’t expect him 
to love me. I shouldn’t have offered to be his wife. 1 ought 
only to have offered him my fortune.” 

She heard her lover’s footstep in the quadrangle without, in 
the stillness of the summer morning, and shivered at the sound. 
It was less than a quarter of an hour since she had been walking 
with him up and down the cloistered way, in which his foot¬ 
steps were echoing with a hollow sound; and now- Even 

in the confusion of her anguish Mary Marchmont could not help 
wondering, as she thought in how short a time the happiness of 
a future might be swept away into chaos. 

“Good-night, mamma,” she said, presently, with an accent 
of weariness. She did not look at her step-mother, who had 
turned away from her now, and had walked toward the open 
window, but stole quietly from the room, crossed the hall, and 
went up the broad staircase to her own lonely chamber. Heiress 
though she was, she had no special attendant of her own; she 
had the privilege of summoning Olivia’s maid whenever she.liad 
need of assistance; but she retained the simple habits of her 
early life, and very rarely troubled Mrs. Marchmont’s grim and 
elderly Abigail. 

Olivia stood lookiug out into the stony quadrangle. It was 
broad daylight now; the cocks were crowing in the distance, 
and a skv-lark singing somewhere in the blue heaven, high up 
above Marchmont Towers. The faded garlands in the banquet- 
ing-room looked wan in the morning sunshine; the lamps were 
burning still, for the servants waited until Mrs. Marchmont 
should have retired before they entered the room. Edward 
Arundel was walking up and down the cloister, smoking his 
second cigar. 

He stopped presently, seeing his cousin at the window. 

“ What, Livy,” he cried “ not gone to bed yet?” 

“ No; I am going directly.” 

“ Mary has gone, I hope?” 

“ Yes; she has gone. Good-night.” 

“ Good-morning, my dear Mrs. Marchmont,” the young man 
answered, laughing. “If the partridges were in I should be 
going ignominously to bed, like a worn-out reveler who has 
drunk too much sparkling hock. I like the still best, by the bye 
—the Johannisberger, that poor John’s predecessor imported 
from the Rhine. But I suppose there is no help for it, and l 


124 JOHN MARCHMONT'& LEGACY. 

must go to bed in the face of all that eastern glory. I should 
be mounting for a gallop on the race course if I were in Cal¬ 
cutta. But I’ll go to bed, Mrs. Marchmont, and humbly await 
your breakfast-hour. They’re stacking the new hay in the 
meadows beyond the park. Don’t you smell it?” 

Olivia shrugged her shoulders with an impatient frown. 
Good heavens! how frivolous and senseless this man’s talk 
seemed to her! She was plunging her soul into an abyss of sin 
and ruin for his sake; and she hated him, and rebelled against 
him, because he was so little worthy of the sacrifice.' 

“ Goad-morning,” she said abruptly. “ I’m tired to death.” 

She moved away and left him. 

Five minutes afterward he went up the great oak staircase 
after her, whistling a serenade from “ Fra Diavolo ” as he went. 
He was one of those people to whom life seemed all holiday. 
Younger son though he was, he had never known the pitfalls of 
debt and difficulty into which the junior members of rich 
families are so apt to plunge headlong in early youth, and from 
which they emerge, enfeebled and crippled, to endure an after¬ 
life imbittered by all the shabby miseries which wait upon aris¬ 
tocratic pauperism. Brave, honorable and simple-minded, 
Edward Arundel had fought the batttle of life like a good sol¬ 
dier, and had carried a stainless shield where the fight was 
thickest, and victory hard to win. His sunshiny nature won 
him friends, and his better qualities kept them. 

Young men trusted and respected him, and old men, gray in 
the service of their country, spoke well of him. His handsome 
face was a pleasant decoration at any festival; his kindly voice 
and hearty laugh at a dinner-table were as good as the music 
in the gallery at the end of a banqueting-chamber. 

He had that freshness of spirit which is the peculiar gift of 
some natures; and he had as yet never known sorrow, except, 
indeed, such tender and com passion ate sympathy as he had 
often felt for the calamities of others. 

Olivia Marchmont heard her cousin’s cheery tenor voice as he 
passed her chamber. “ How happy he is!” she thought. “ His 
very happiness is one insult the more to me!” 

The widow paced up and down her room in the morning sun¬ 
shine, thinking of the things she had said in the banqueting- 
hall below, and of her step-daughter’s white, despairing face. 
What had she done? What was the extent of the sin she had 
committed? Olivia Marchmont asked herself these two ques¬ 
tions. The old habit of self-examination was not quite aban¬ 
doned yet. She sinned, and then set herself to work to try and 
justify her sin. 

“ How should he love her!” she thought. “ What is there in 
her pale, unmeaning face that should win the love of a man who 
despises me ?” 

She stopped before a cheval-glass, and surveyed herself from 
head to foot, frowning angrily at her handsome image, hatiug 
herself for her despised beauty. Her white shoulders looked 
like stainless marble against the rich ruby darkness of her 
velvet dress. She had snatched the diamond ornaments from 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 126 

her bead, and her loug, black hair fell about her bosom in thick, 
waveless tresses. 

*' I am haudsomer than she is, and cleverer; and I love him 
better, ten thousand times, than she loves him,” Olivia March¬ 
mont thought, as she turned contemptuously from the glass. 
“ Is it likely, then, that he cares for anything but her fortune? 
Any other woman in the world would have argued as I argued 
to night. Any woman would have believed that she did her 
duty in warning this besotted girl against her folly. What do I 
know of Edward Arundel that should lead me to think him 
better or nobler than other men ? and how many men sell them¬ 
selves for the love of a woman’s wealth? Perhaps good may 
come of my mad folly, after all: and I may have saved this girl 
from a life of misery by the words I have spoken to-night.” 

The devils—forever lying in wait for this woman, whose 
gloomy pride rendered her in some manner akin to themselves 
—may have laughed at her as she argued thus with herself. 

She lay down at last to sleep, worn out by the excitement of 
the long night, and to dream horrible dreams. The servants, 
with the exception of one who rose betimes to open the great 
house, slept long after the unwonted festival. Edward Arundel 
slumbered as heavily as any member of that wearied household; 
and thus it was that there was no one in the way to see a shrink¬ 
ing, trembling figure creep down the sunlit staircase, and steal 
across the threshold of the wide hall-door. 

There was no one lo see Mary Marchmont’s silent flight from 
the gaunt Lincolnshire mansion, in which she had known so 
little real happiness. There was no one to comfort the sorrow - 
stricken girl in her despair and desolation of spirit. She crept 
away, like some escaped prisoner, in the early morning, from 
the house which the law called her own. 

And the hand of the woman whom John Marchmont had 
chosen to be his daughter’s friend and counselor was the hand 
which drove that daughter from the shelter of her home. The 
voice of her whom the weak father had trusted in, fearful to 
confide his child into the hands of God, but blindly confident 
in his own judgment, was the voice which had uttered the 
lying words, whose every syllable, had been as a separate 
dagger thrust into the orphan girl’s lacerated heart. It was 
v her father—her father who had placed this woman over her, 
and had entailed upon her the awful agony that drove her out 
into an unknown world, careless whither she went in her de¬ 
spair. 


CHAPTER XV. 

MARY’S LETTER . 

It was past twelve o’clock when Edward Arundel strolled into 
the dining-room. The windows were open, and the scent of the 
mignonette upon the terrace was blown in upon the warm 
summer breeze. 

Mrs. Marchmont was sitting at one end of the long table, 
leading a newspaper. She looked up as Edward entered the 



126 JOHN MARGI1M0NT’S LEGACY. 

room. She was pale, but not much paler than usual. The fever¬ 
ish light had faded out of her eyes, and they looked dim and 
heavy. 

“ Good-morning, Livy,” the young man said. “ Mary is not 
up yet, I suppose ?” 

“ I believe not.” 

“ Poor little girl! A long rest will do her good after her first 
ball. How pretty and fairy-like she looked in her white gauze 
dress, and with that circlet of pearls round her soft brown hair! 
Your taste, I suppose, Olivia? She looked like a snow-drop 
among all the other gaudy flowers—the roses and tiger lilies, 
and peonies and dahlias. That eldest Miss Hickman is hand¬ 
some, but she’s so terribly conscious of her attractions. That 
little girl from Swampington with the black ringlets is rather 
pretty, and Laura Filmer is a jolly, dashing girl; she looks you 
full in the face, and talks to you about hunting with as much 
gusto as an old whipper-in. I don’t think much of Major Haw¬ 
ley’s three tall, sandy-haired daughters; but Fred Hawley’s a 
capital fellow; it’s a pity he’s a civilian. In short, my dear 
Olivia, take it altogether, I think your ball was a success, and 
I hope you’ll give us another in the hunting-season.” 

Mrs. Marcbmont did not condescend to reply to her cousin’s 
meaningless rattle. She sighed wearily, and began to fill the 
tea-pot from the old-fashioned silver urn. Edward loitered in 
one of the windows, whistling to a peacock that was stalking 
solemnly backward and forward upon the stone balustrade. 

“ I should like to drive you and Mary down to the seashore, 
Livy, after breakfast. Will you go?” 

Mrs. Marchmont shook her head. 

“ I am a great deal too tired to think of going out to-day,” 
she said, ungraciously. 

“ And I never felt fresher in my life,” the young man re¬ 
sponded, laughing; “ last night’s festivities seem to have revivi¬ 
fied me. I wish Mary would' come down,” he added, with a 
yawn, “ I could give her another lesson in billiards, at any 
rate. Poor little girl, I am afraid she’ll never make a car- 
rom.” 

Captain Arundel sat down to his breakfast, and drank the cup 
of tea poured out for him by Olivia. Had she been a sinful 
woman of another type, she would have put arsenic into the 
cup perhaps, and so have made an end of the young officer and 
of her own folly. As it was, she only sat by, with her own un¬ 
tasted breakfast before her, and watched him while he ate a 
plateful of raised pie, and drank his cup of tea, with the healthy 
appetite which generally accompanies youth and a good con¬ 
science. He sprung up from the table directly he had finished 
his meal, and cried out: 

“What can make Mary so lazy this morning? she is usually 
such on early riser.” 

Mrs. Marchmont rose as her cousin said this, and a vague feel¬ 
ing of uneasiness took possession of her mind. She remembered 
tne white face which had blanched bsneatb the angry glare of 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


127 


her eyes, the blank look of despair that had come over Mary’s 
countenance a few hours before. 

“I will go and call her myself/’ she said. N—no; I’ll send 
Barbara.” She did not wait to ring the bell, but went into the 
hall and called sharply “ Barbara! Barbara!” 

A woman came out of a passage leading to the housekeeper’s 
room, in answer to Mrs. Marchmont's call, a woman of about 
fifty years of age, dressed in gray stuff, and with a grave in¬ 
scrutable face, a wooden countenance that gave no token of its 
owner’s character. Barbara Simmons might have been the best 
or the worst of women, a Mrs. Fry ora Mrs. Brownrigg, for any 
evidence her face afforded against either hypothesis. 

“ I want you to go up-stairs, Barbara, and call Miss March- 
mont,” Olivia said. “Captain Arundel and I have finished 
breakfast.” 

The woman obeyed, and Mrs. Marchmont returned to the din¬ 
ing-room, where Edward was trying to amuse himself with the 
Times of the previous day. 

Ten minutes afterward Barbara Simmons came into her room 
carrying a letter on a silver waiter. Had the document been a 
death-warrant, or a telegraphic announcement of the landing of 
the French at Dover, the well-trained servant would have placed 
it upon a salver before presenting it to her mistress. 

“ Miss Marchmont is not in her room, ma’am,” she said; “ the 
bed has not been slept on; and I found this letter, addressed to 
Captain Arundel upon the table.” 

Olivia’s face grew livid; a horrible dread rushed into her 
mind. Edward snatched the letter which the servant held to¬ 
ward him. . 

“Mary not in her room! What, in Heaven’s name, can it 
mean ?” he cried. 

He tore open the letter. The writing was not easily decipher¬ 
able for the tears which the orphan girl had shed over it: 

“ My own dear Edward,—I have loved you so dearly and so 
foolishly, and you have been so kind to me, that I have quite for¬ 
gotten how unworthy I am of your affection. But I am forgetful 
no longer. Something has happened which has opened my eyes to 
my own folly—I know now that you did not love me; that I had 
no claim to your love; no charms or attractions such as so many 
other women possess, and for which you might have loved me. 
I know this now, dear Edward, and that all my happiness has 
been a foolish dream; but do not think that I blame any but 
myself for what has happened. Take my fortune: long ago, 
when I was a little girl, I asked my father to let me share it 
with you. I ask you now to take it all, dear friend; and I go 
away*forever from a house in which I have learnt how little 
happiness riches can give. Do not be unhappy about me. I 
shall pray for you always—always remembering your goodness 
to my dead father; always looking back to the day upon which 
you came to see us in our poor lodging. I am very ignorant of 
all worldly business, but I hope the law will let me give you 
Marchmont Towers and all my fortune, whatever it may be. 


128 JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 

Let Mr. Paulette see this latter part of ,'my letter, and let him 
fully understand that I abandon all my rights to you from this 
dayl Good-bye, dear friend; think of me sometimes, but never 
think of me sorrowfully. Mary MARCHMONT. 

This was all. This was the letter which the heart-broken girl 
had written to her lover. It was in no manner different from 
the letter she might have written to him nine years before in 
Oakley Street. It was as childish in its ignorance and inex¬ 
perience, as womanly in its tender self-abnegation. 

Edward Arundel stared at the simple lines like a man in a 
dream, doubtful of his own identity, doubtful of the reality of 
the world about him, in his hopeless wonderment. He read the 
letter line by line again and again, first in dull stupefaction and 
muttering the words mechanically as he read them, with the 
full light of their meaning dawning gradually upon him. 

Her fortune! He had never loved her! She had discovered 
her own folly! What did it all mean ? What was the clew to 
the mystery of this letter, which had stunned and bewildered 
him, until the very power of reflection seemed lost ? The dawn¬ 
ing of that day had seen their parting, and the innocent face 
had been lifted to his, beaming with love and trust. And 

now- The letter dropped from his hand, and fluttered 

slowly to the ground. Olivia Marchmont stooped to pick it up. 
Her movement roused the young man from his stupor, and in 
that moment he caught the sight of his cousin’s livid face. 

He started as if a thunder bolt had burst at his feet. An idea, 
sudden as some inspired revelation, rushed into his mind. 

“ Read that letter, Olivia Marchmont!” he said. 

The woman obeyed. Slowly and deliberately she read the 
childish epistle w^hich Mary had written to her lover. In every 
line, in every word, the widow saw the effect of her own deadly 
work; she saw how deeply the poison, dropped from her ow n en¬ 
venomed tongue, had sunk into the innocent heart of the girl. 

Edward Arundel watched her with flaming eyes. v His tall, 
soldierly frame trembled in the intensity of his passion. He 
followed his cousin’s eyes along the lines in Mary Marchmont’s 
letter, waiting till she should come to the end. Then the tu¬ 
multuous storm of indignation burst forth, until Olivia cowered 
beneath the lightning of her cousin's glance. 

Was this the man she had called frivolous? Was this the 
boyish, red-coated dandy she had despised? Was this the curled 
and perfumed representative of swelldom, whose talk never 
soared to higher flights than the description of a day’s snipe 
shooting, or a run with the Burleigh fox-hounds? The wicked 
woman’s eyelids drooped over her averted eves; she turned 
away, shrinking from this fearless accuser. 

This mischief is some of your work, Olivia Marchmont!” 
Edward Arundel cried. “It is you who have slandered and 
traduced me to my dear friend’s daughter! Who else would 
dare accuse a Dangerfield Arundel of baseness? who else would 
be vile enough to call my father’s son a liar and a traitor ? It 
is you who have whispered shameful insinuations into this poor 


JO HR MARCIIMONT'S LEGACY. 


129 


child's inuocent ear! I scarcely need the confirmation of yyur 
ghastly face to tell me this. It is you who have driven Mary 
Marchmont from the home in which you should have sheltered 
and protected her! You envied her, I suppose—envied her the 
thousands which might have ministered to your wicked pride 
and ambition; the pride which has always held you aloof‘ from 
those who might have loved you; the ambition that has made 
you a soured and discontented woman, whose gloomy face re¬ 
pels all natural affection. You envied the gentle girl whom 
your dead husband committed to your care, and who should 
have been most sacred to you. You envied her, and seized the 
first occasion upon which you might stab her to the very core of 
her tender heart. What other motive could you have had for 
doing this deadly wrong? None, so help me Heaven!” 

No other motive! Olivia Marchmont dropped down in a heap 
on the ground near her cousin’s feet; not kneeling, but grovel¬ 
ing upon the carpeted floor, with her hands twisted one in the 
other, and writhing convulsively, and with her head falling for¬ 
ward on her breast. She uttered no syllable of self-justification 
or denial. The pitiless words rained down upon her provoked 
no reply. But in the depths of her heart sounded the echo of 
Edward Arundel’s words; “The pride which has always held 
you aloof from those who might have loved you; ... a discon¬ 
tented woman, whose gloomy face repels all natural affection.” 

“Oh God!” she thought, “he might have loved me, then! 
He might have loved me, if I could have locked my anguish in 
my own heart, and smiled at him and flattered him!” 

And then an icy indifference took possession of her. What 
did it matter that Edward Arundel repudiated and hated her? 
He had never loved her. His careless friendliness had made as 
wide a gulf between them as his bitterest hate could ever make. 
Perhaps, indeed, his new-born hate would be nearer to love than 
his indifference had been, for at least he would think of her 
now, if he thought ever so bitterly. 

“ Listen to me, Olivia Marchmont,” the young man said, 
while the woman still crouched upon (he ground near his feet, 
self-confessed in the abandonment of her despair. “ Wherever 
this girl may have gone, driven hence by your wickedness, I 
will follow her. My answer to the lie you have insinuated 
against me shall be my immediate marriage with my old 
friend’s orphan child. He knew me well enough to know how 
far I was above the baseness of a fortune-hunter, and he uisbed 
that I should be his daughter’s husband. I should be a coward 
and a fool were 1 to be for one moment influenced by such a 
slander as that which you have whispered in Mary March- 
mont’s ear. It is not the individual only whom you traduce. 
You slander the cloth I wear, the family to which I belong; and 
my best justification will be the contempt in which I hold your 
infamous insinuations. When you hear that I have squandered 
Mary Marchmont’s fortune, or cheat the children 1 pray God 
she may live to bear me, it will be time enough for you to tell 
the world that your kinsman, Edward Dangerfield Arundel, is a 
swindler and a traitor,” 


130 JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

He strode out into the hall, leaving his cousin on the ground; 
and she heard his voice outside the dining-room door making 
inquiries of the servants. 

“ They could tell him nothing of Mary’s flight. Her bed had 
not been slept in; nobody had seen her leave the house; it was 
most likely, therefore, that she had stolen away very early, 
before the servants were astir. 

Where had she gone ? Edward Arundel's heart beat wildly as 
he asked himself that question. He remembered how often he 
had heard of women, as young and innocent as Mary March- 
mont, who had rushed to destroy themselves in a tumult of 
agony and despair. How easily this poor child, who believed 
that the dream of happiness was forever broken, might have 
crept down through the gloomy wood to the edge of the slug¬ 
gish river to drop into the weedy stream and hide her sorrow 
under the quiet water! He could fancy her, a new Ophelia, 
pale and pure as the Danish prince’s slighted love, floating past 
the weird branches of the willows, borne up for a while by the 
current, to sink in silence among the shadows further down the 
stream. 

He thought of these things in one moment, and in the next 
dismissed the thought. Mary’s letter breathed the spirit of gen¬ 
tle resignation rather than of wild despair. “ I shall always 
pray for you; I shall always remember you,” she had written. 
Her lover remembered how much sorrow the orphan girl had 
endured in her brief life. He looked back to her childish days 
of poverty and self-denial; her early loss of her mother; her 
grief at her father’s second marriage; the shock of that beloved 
father’s death. Her sorrows had followed each other in gloomy 
succession, with only narrow intervals of peace between each 
new agony. She was accustomed, therefore, to grief. It is the 
soul untutored by affliction, the rebellious heart that has never 
known calamity, which becomes mad and desperate, and breaks 
under the first blow. Mary Marchmobt had learned the habit 
of endurance in the hard school of sorrow. 

Ed ward Arundel walked out upon the terrace, and reread the 
missing girl’s letter. He was calmer now, and able to face the 
situation with all its difficulties and perplexities. ELe was los¬ 
ing time, perhaps, in stopping to deliberate; but it was no use 
to rush off in reckless haste, undetermined in which direction 
he should seek for the lost mistress of Marchmont Towers. 
One of the grooms was busy in the stables saddling Captain 
Arundel’s horse, and in the meantime the young man went out 
alone upon the sunny terrace to deliberate upon Mary’s letter. 

Complete resignation was expressed m every line of that child¬ 
ish epistle. The heiress spoke most decisively as to her aban¬ 
donment of her fortune and her home. It was clear, then, that 
she meant to leave Lincolnshire; for she would know that im¬ 
mediate steps would be taken to discover her hiding-place, and 
bring her back to Marchmont Towers. 

Where was she likely to go in her inexperience of the outer 
world ? where but to those humble relations of her dead mother’s, 
of whom her father had spoken in his letter to Edward Arun- 


JOHN MARCIIMONT'S LEGACY. 


131 


del, and with whom the young man knew she had kept up an 
occasional correspondence, sending them many little gifts out 
of her pocket-money. These people were small tenant-farmers 
at a place called Marlingford, in Berkshire. Edward knew their 
name and the name of the farm. 

“ I’ll make inquiries at the Kemberling Station to begin with,” 
he thought. “ There’s a through train from the north that 
stops at Kemberling at little before six. My poor darling may 
have easily caught that, if she left the house at five.” 

Captain Arundel went back into the hall and summoned Bar¬ 
bara Simmons. The woman replied with rather a sulky air to 
his numerous questions; but she told him that Miss Marchmont 
had left her ball dress upon the bed, and had put on a gray 
cashmere dress trimmed with black ribbon, which she had worn 
as half-mourning for her father; a black straw bonnet, with a 
crape veil, and a silk mantle trimmed with crape. She had 
taken with her a small carpet-bag, some linen—for the linen 
drawer of her wardrobe was open, and the things scattered 
confusedly about—and the little morocco case in which she 
kept her pearl ornaments, and the diamond ring left her by her 
father. 

“ Had she any money?” Edward asked. 

“ Yes, sir, she was never without money. She spent a good 
deal among the poor people she visited with my mistress; but I 
dare say she may have had between ten and twenty pounds in 
her purse.” 

“ She will go to Berkshire,” Edward Arundel thought: “ the 
idea of going to her humble friends would be the first to pre¬ 
sent itself to her mind. She will go to her dead mother’s sister, 
and give her all her jewels, and ask for shelter, in the quiet 
farm-house. She will act like one of the heroines in the old- 
fashioned novels she used to read in Oakley Street, the simple- 
minded damsels of those innocent story-books, who think noth¬ 
ing of resigning a castle and a coronet, and going out into the 
world to work for their daily bread in a white satin gown, and 
with a string of pearls to bind their disheveled locks,” 

Captain Arundel’s horse was brought round to the terrace- 
steps, as he stood with Mary’s letter in his hand, waiting to rush 
away to the rescue of his sorrowful love. 

“ Tell Mrs. Marchmont that I shall not return to the Towers 
till I bring her step-daughter with me,” he said to the groom; 
and then, without stopping to utter another word, he shook 
the rein on his horse’s neck, and galloped away along the grav¬ 
eled drive leading to the great iron gates of Marchmont 
Towers. 

Olivia heard his message, which had been spoken in a clear 
loud voice, like some knightly defiance, sounding trumpet like 
at a castle-gate. She stood in one of the windows of the dining¬ 
room, hidden by the faded velvet curtain, and watched her 
cousin ride away, brave and handsome as any knight-errant of 
the chivalrous past, and as true as Bayard himself 



182 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY, 


CHAPTER XVL 

A NEW PROTECTOR. 

Captain Arundel’s inquiries at the Kemberling Station re¬ 
sulted in an immediate success. A young lady—a young woman 
the railway official called her—dressed in black, wearing a crape 
veil over her face, and carrying a small carpet-bag in her hand, 
had taken a second-class ticket for London by the 5.50, a parlia¬ 
mentary train, which stopped at almost every station on the 
line, and reached Euston Square at half-past twelve. 

Edward looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to two 
o’clock. The express did not stop at Kemberling; but he would 
be able to catch it at Swampington at a quarter-past three. 
Even then, however, he could scarcely hope to get to Berkshire 
that night. 

“My darling girl will not discover how foolish her doubts 
have been until to-morrow.” he thought. “ Silly child! has my 
love so little the aspect of truth that she can doubt me?” 

He sprung on his horse again, flung a shilling to the railway 
porter who had held the bridle, and rode away along the Swamp- 
ington Road. The clocks in the gray old Norman turrets were 
striking three as the young man crossed the bridge, and paid his 
toll at the little toll-house by the stone archway. 

The streets were as lonely as usual in the hot July afternoon; 
and the long line of sea beyond the dreary marshes was blue in 
the sunshine. Captain Arundel passed the two churches, and 
the low-roofed rectory, and rode away to the outskirts of the 
town, where the station glared in all the brilliancy of new red 
bricks, and dazzling stuccoed chimneys, athwart" a desert of 
waste ground. 

The express train came tearing up to the quiet platform two 
minutes after Edward had taken his ticket; and in another 
minute the clanging bell pealed out its discordant signal, and 
the young man was borne, with a shriek and a whistle, away 
upon the first stage of his search for Mary March mont. 

It was nearly seven o’clock when he reached Euston Square; 
and he only got to the Paddington Station in time to hear that 
the last train for Marlingford had just started. There was no 
possibility of his reaching the little Berkshire village that night. 
No mail train stopped within a reasonable distauce of the ob¬ 
scure station. There was no help for it therefore. Captain 
Arundel had nothing to do but to wait for the next morning. 

He walked slowly away from the station, very much disheart¬ 
ened by this discovery. 

“ I’d better sleep at some hotel up this way,” he thought, as he 
strolled listlessly in the direction of Oxford Street, “so as to be 
on the spot to catch the first train to-morrow morning. "What 
am I to do with myself all this night, racked with uncertainty 
about Mary ?” 

He remembered that cue of bis brother officers was staying at 
the hotel in Covent Garden where Edward himself stopped when 
business detained him in London for a day or two. 


138 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

lt Shall I go and gee Lucas ?” Captain Arundel thought. “ He's 
a good fellow, and won’t bore me with a lot of questions, if he 
sees I’ve something on my mind. There may be some letters 
for me at E-’s. Poor little Polly!” 

He could never think of her without something of that pitiful 
tenderness which he might have felt for a young and helpless 
child whom it was his duty and privilege to protect and succor. 
It may be that there was little of the lover's fiery enthusiasm 
mingled with the purer and more tender feelings with which 
Edward Arundel regarded his dead friend’s orphan daughter; 
but in place of this there was a chivalrous devotion, such as 
woman rarely wins in these degenerate modern days. 

The young soldier walked through the lamp-lit western streets 
thinking of the missing girl, now assuring himself that his in¬ 
stinct had not deceived him, and that Mary must have gone 
straight to the Berkshire farmer’s house, and in the next mo¬ 
ment seized with a sudden terror that it might be otherwise: 
the helpless girl might have gone out into a world of which she 
was as ignorant as a child, determined to hide herself from all 
who had ever known her. If it should be thus: if, on going 
down to Marlingford, he obtained no tidings of his friend’s 
daughter, what was he- to do? where.was he to look for her 
next? 

He would put advertisements in the papers, calling upou his 
betrothed to trust him and return to him. Perhaps Mary 
Marchmont was of all people in this world the least likely to 
look into a newspaper; but at least it would be doing something 
to do this, and Edward Arundel determined upon going straight 
off to Printing-House Square to draw up an appeal to the miss¬ 
ing girl. 

It was past ten o’clock when Captain Arundel came to this 
determination, and lie had reached the neighborhood of Co vent 
Garden and of the theaters. The staring play-bills adorned al¬ 
most every threshold, and fluttered against every door-post; and 
the young soldier, going into a tobacconist's to fill his cigar-case, 
stared abstractedly at a gaudy blue-and-red announcement of 
the last dramatic attraction to be seen at Drury Lane. It was 
scarcely strange that the captain’s thoughts wandered back to 
his boyhood, that shadowy time, far away behind his later days 
of Indian warfare and gkny, and that he remembered the 
December night upon which he had sat with his cousin in a box 
at the great patent theater, watching the consumptive super¬ 
numerary struggling under the weight of his banner. From 
the box at Drury Lane to the next morning’s breakfast in Oak¬ 
ley Street was but a natural transition of thought; but with 
that recollection of the humble Lambeth lodging, with the 
picture of a little girl in a pinafore sitting demurely at her 
father’s table, and meekly waiting on his guest, an idea flashed 
across Edward Arundel’s mind, and brought the hot blood into 
his face. 

What if Mary had gone to Oakley Street ? Was not this even 
more likely than that she should seek refuge with her kinsfolk 
ir Berkshire? She had lived in the Lambeth lodging for years, 


134 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


and led the way up the narrow staircase. She was a good lazy 
and had only left that plebeian shelter for the grandeur of 
Marchmont 'towers. What more natural than that she should 
go back to the familiar habitation, dear to her by reason of a 
thousand associations with her dead father ? What more likely 
than that she should turn instinctively, in the hour of her desola¬ 
tion to the humble friends whom she had known in her child- 
hood? . .... 

Edward Arundel was almost too impatient to wait while the 
smart young damsel behind the tobacconist’s counter handed 
him change for the half sovereign which he had just tendered 
her. He darted out into the street, and shouted violently to the 
driver of a passing hansom—there are always loitering hansoms 
in the neighborhood of Covent 'Garden—who was, after the 
manner of his kind, looking on any side rather than that upon 
which Providence had sent him a fare. 

“ Oakley Street, Lambeth,” the young man cried. “ Double 
fare if you get there in ten minutes.” 

The tall, raw-boned horse rattled off at that peculiar pace 
common to his species, making as much noise upon the pave¬ 
ment as if he had been winning a metropolitan Derby, and at 
about twenty minutes past nine drew up, smoking and panting, 
before the dimlv-lighted window of the ladies’ wardrobe, where 
a couple of flaring tallow-candles illuminated the splendor of a 
foreground of dirty artificial flowers, frayed satin shoes, and 
tarnished gilt combs; a middle distance of blue gauzy tissue, 
embroidered with beetles’ wings; and a background of greasy 
black satin. Edward Arundel flung back the doors of the 
hansom with a bang, and leaped out upon the pavement. The 
proprietress of the ladies’ wardrobe was lolling against the door¬ 
post, refreshing herself with the soft evening breezes from the 
roads of Westminster and Waterloo, and talking to a neighbor. 

“ Bless her pore innercent ’art!” the woman was saying; “ she 
cried herself tc sleep at last. But you never heard anythink so 
pitiful as she talked to me at fust, sweet love! and the very 
picture of my own poor Eliza Jane, as she looked. You might 
have said it was Eliza Jane come back to life, only paler and 
more sickly-like, and not that beautiful fresh color, and ringlets 
curled all round in a crop, as Eliza Ja-” 

Edward Arundel burst in upon the good woman’s talk, which 
rambled on in an unintermitting stream, unbroken bv much 
punctuation. 

“ Miss Marchmont is here,” he said: “I know she is. Thank 
God, thank God! Let me see her, please, directly. I am Cap¬ 
tain Arundel, her father’s friend, and her affianced husband. 
You remember me, perhaps ? I came here nine years ago to 
breakfast, one December morning. I can recollect you perfectly, 
and I know that you were always good to my poor friend’s 
daughter. To think that I should find her here! You shall be 
well rewarded for your kindness to her. But take me to ber; 
pray take me to her at once!” 

The proprietress of the wardrobe snatched up one of the cau¬ 
dles that guttered in a brass flat candlestick upon the counter, 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


135 


creature, aud she was so completely borne down by Edward’s 
excitement, that she could only mutter disjointed sentences, to 
the effect that the gentleman had brought her heart into her 
mouth, and that her legs felt all of a jelly, and that her poor 
knees was a’most giving way under her, and other incoherent 
statements concerning the physical effect of the mental shocks 
she had that day received. 

She opened the door of that shabby sitting-room upon the 
first floor, in which the crippled eagle brooded over the convex 
mirror, and stood aside upon the threshold while Captain Arun¬ 
del entered the room. A tallow candle was burning dimly 
upon the table, and a girlish form lay upon the narrow horse¬ 
hair sofa, shrouded by a woolen shawl, 

“ She went to sleep about half an hour ago, sir,” the woman 
said; ‘‘and she cried herself to sleep, pore lamb, I think. I 
made her some tea, and got her a few cresset and a French roll, 
with a bit of best fresh; but she wouldn’t touch nothin’, or ouly 
a few spoonfuls of the tea, just to please me. What is it that’s 
drove her away from her ’ome, sir, and such a good ’ome, too? 
She showed me a diamond ring as her pore par gave her in his 
will. He left me twenty pound, pore gentleman—which he 
always acted like a gentleman bred and born: and Mr. Pollit, 
the lawyer, sent his clerk along with it and his compliments— 
though I’m sure I never looked for nothink havin’ always had 
my rent faithful to the very miuute; and Miss Mary used to 
bring it down to me so pretty, and——” 

But the whispering had grown louder by this time, and Mary 
Marchmont awoke from her feverish sleep, and lifted her weary 
head from the hard horse-hair pillow and looked about her, half 
forgetful of where she was, and of what had happened within 
the last eighteen hours of her life. The soft brown eyes wan¬ 
dered here and there, doubtful as to the reality of what they 
looked upon, until the girl saw her lover’s figure, tall and 
splendid in the humble apartment, a tender, half reproachful 
smile upon his face, and his handsome blue eyes beaming with 
love and truth. She saw him, and a faint shriek broke from 
her tremulous lips as she tottered a few paces forward and fell 
upon his breast. 

“ You love me, then, Edward,” she cried; “ you do love me!” 

“Yes, my darling, as truly and tenderly as ever woman was 
loved upon this earth.” 

And then the soldier sat down upon the hard, bristly sofa, 
and with Mary’s head still resting upon his breast, and his 
strong hand straying among her disordered hair, he reproached 
her for her foolishness, and comforted and soothed her; while 
the proprietress of the apartment stood, with the brass candle¬ 
stick in her hand, watching the young lovers and weeping over 
their sorrows, as if she had been witnessing a scene in a play. 
Their innocent affection was unrestrained by the good woman’s 
presence; and when Mary had smiled upon her lover, and as¬ 
sured him that she would never, never, never dopbt him again, 
Captain Arundel was fain to kiss the soft hearted landlady in 
his enthusiasm, and to promise her the handsomest silk dress 


186 JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

that had ever been seen in Oakley Street, among all the faded 
splendors of silk and satin that ladies’-maids brought for her 

consideration, _ „ . 

“And now, my darling, my foolish runaway Polly, what is to 
be done with you?” asked the young soldier. “Will you go 
back to the Towers to-morrow morning?” 

Mary Marcbmont clasped her hands before her face, and be¬ 
gan to tremble violently. _, 

“ Oh no, no, no!” she cried; “don’t ask me to go back, Ed¬ 
ward. I can never go back to that house again, while-” 

She stopped suddenly, looking piteously at her lover. 

“ While my cousin, Olivia Marchmont lives there.” Captain 
Arundel said, with an angry frown. “God knows it’s a bitter 
thing for me to think that your troubles should come from any 
of my kith and kin, Polly, She has used you very badly, then, 
this woman ? She has been very unkind to you ?” 

“ No, nol never before last night. It seems so long ago; but 
it was only last night, was it? Until then she was always kind 
to me. I didn’t love her, you know, though I tried to do so for 
papa's sake, and out of gratitude to her for taking such trouble 
with my education; but one can be grateful to people without- 
loving them, and 1 never grew to love her. But last night- 
last night she said such cruel things to me—such cruel things. 
O Edward, Edward!” the girl cried, suddenly, clasping her 
hands and looking imploringly at Captain Arundel, “ were the 
cruel things she said true ? Did I do wrong when I offered to 
be your wife ?” 

How could the young man answer this question except by 
clasping his bethrothed to his heart? So there was another 
little love-scene, over which Mrs. Pimpernel—the proprietress’ 
name was Pimpernel—wept fresh tears, murmuring that the 
Capting was the sweetest young man, sweeter than Mr. Mac- 
ready in Claude Melnock; and that the scene altogether reminded 
her of that “cutting” episode where the proud mother went on 
against the pore young man, and Miss Faucit came out so 
beautiful. They are a play-going population in Oakley Street, 
and compassionate and sentimental like all true play-goers. 

“What shall I do with you, Miss Marchmont?” Edward 
Arundel asked, gayly, when the liftle love-scene was con 
eluded. “ My mother and sister are away, at a German water¬ 
ing-place, trying some unpronounceable Spa for the benefit of 
poor Letty’s health, Reginald is with them, and my father’s 
alone at Dangerfield. So I can’t take you down there, as 1 
might have done if my mother had been at home; I don’t much 
care for the Mostyns, or you might have stopped in Montague 
Square, There are no friendly friars nowadays who will marry 
Romeo and Juliet at half-an-hour’s notice. You must live a, 
fortnight somewhere, Polly: where shall it be?” 

“ Oh, let me stay here, please,” Miss Marchmont pleaded; “ I 
was always so happy here!” 

“ Lord love, her precious heart!” exclaimed Mrs. Pimpernel, 
lifting up her hands in a rapture of admiration. “ To think as 
she shouldn’t have a bit of pride, after all the on |ey her pore 



JOHN MAROHMONT'S LEGACY. 


187 


par came into! To think as she should wish to stay in her old 
lodgin'?, where everythink shall be done to make her comfort* 
able; and the air back and front is very ’ealthy, although you 
might not believe it, and the Blind School and Bedlam hard "by, 
and Kennington Common only a pleasant walk, and beautiful 
and open this warm summer weather.” 

“ Yes, I should' like to stop here, please,” Mary murmured. 
Even in the midst of her agitation, overwhelmed as she was by 
the emotions of the present, her thoughts went back to the past, 
and she remembered how delightful it would be to go and see 
the accommodating butcher, and the green-grocer’s daughter, 
the kind butterman who had called her “ little lady,” and the 
disreputable gray parrot. How delightful it would be to see 
these humble friends, now that She was grown up, and had 
money wherewith to make them presents in token of her grati¬ 
tude! 

“ Very well, theu, Polly,” Captain Arundel said, “ you’ll stay 
here. And Mrs.-” 

i( Pimpernel,” the landlady suggested. 

“ Mrs. Pimpernel will take as good care of you as if you were 
Queen of England, and the welfare of the nation depended upon 
your safety. And I’ll stop at my hotel in Covent Garden; and 
I’ll see Richard Paulette—he’s my lawyer as well as yours, you 
know, Polly—and tell him something of what has happened, and 
make arrangements for our immediate marriage!” 

“ Our marriage!” * 

Mary Marchmont echoed her lover’s last words, and looked up at 
him almost with a bewildered air. She had never thought of 
an early marriage with Edward Arundel as the result of her 
flight from Lincolnshire. She had a vague notion that she 
would live in Oakiev Street for years, and that in some remote 
time the soldier would come to claim her. 

“Yes, Polly darling; Olivia Marchmont’s conduct has made 
me decide upon a very bold step. It is evident to me that my 
cousin hates you; for what reason Heaven only knows, since 
you can have done nothing to provoke her hate. When your 
father was a poor man, it was to me he would have confided 
you. He changed his mind afterward, very naturally, and chose 
another guardian for his orphan child. If my cousin had ful¬ 
filled his trust, Mary, I would have deferred to her authority, 
and would have held myself aloof until your minority was 
passed, rather than ask you to marry me without your step¬ 
mother’s consent. But Olivia Marchmont has forfeited her 
right to be consulted in this matter. She has tortured you and 
traduced me by her poisonous slander. If you believe in me, 
Mary, you will consent to be my wife. My justification lies in 
the future. You will not find that I shall sponge uj3on 
fortune, my dear, or lead an idle life because my wife is a rich 
woman.” 

Mary Marchmont looked up with shy tenderness at her 

lover, 

“ I would rather the fortune were yours than mine, Edward,” 


138 JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

she said. “ I will do whatever you wish; I will be guided by 
you in everything.” , 

It was thus that John Marchmont’s daughter consented to 
become the wife of the man she loved, the man whose image 
she had associated since her childhood with all that was good 
and beautiful in mankind. She knew pone of those pretty 
stereotyped phrases by means of which well-bred young 
ladies can go through a graceful fencing match of hesitation 
and equivocation to the anguish of a doubtful and adoring 
suitor. She had no notion of that delusive negative, that be¬ 
witching feminine “ no,” which is proverbially understood to 
mean “ yes.” Weary courses of Roman emperors, South Sea 
Islands, sidereal heavens, tertiary and old red sandstone, had 
very ill-prepared this poor little girl for the stern realities of 
life. 

“I will be guided by you, dear Edward,” she said; “my 
father wished me to be your wife, and if I did not love you, it 
would please me to obey him.” 

It was eleven o’clock when Captain Arundel left Oakley 
Street. The hansom had been waiting all the time, and the 
driver, seeing that his fare was young, handsome, dashing, and 
what he called “ milingtary-like,” demanded an enormous sum 
when he landed the young soldier before the portico of the hotel 
in Covent Garden. 

Edward took a hasty breakfast the next morning, and then 
hurried off to Lincoln’s-Inn Fields. But here a disappointment 
awaited him. Richard Paulette had started for Scotland upon a 
piscatorial excursion. The elder Paulette lived in the south of 
France, and kept his name in the business as a fiction, by means 
of which elderly and obstinate country clients were deluded into 
the belief that the solicitor who conducted their affairs was the 
same legal practitioner who had done business for their fathers 
and grandfathers before them. Mathewson, a grim man, was 
away among the Yorkshire wolds, superintending the foreclos¬ 
ure of certain mortgages upon a bankrupt baronet’s estate. It 
was not likely that Captain Arundel could sit down and pour 
his secrets into the bosom of a clerk, however trustworthy and 
confidential a personage that employe might be. 

The young man’s desire had been that his marriage with Mary 
Marchmont should take place at least with the knowledge and 
approbation of her dead father’s lawyer; but he was impatient 
to assume the only title by which he might have a right to be 
the orphan girl’s champion and protector; and he had therefore 
no inclination to wait until the long vacation was over, and 
Messrs. Paulette & Mathewson returned from their northern 
wanderings. Again, Mary Marchmont suffered from a con¬ 
tinual dread that her step-mother would discover the secret of 
her Mumble retreat, and would follow her and reassume author¬ 
ity over her. 

“Let me be your wife before I see her again, Edward,” the 
girl pleaded, innocently, when this terror was uppermost in her 
mind. “She could not say cruel things to me if I were your 
wife, I know it is wicked to be so frightened of her, because 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


109 


she was always good to me until that night; but I cannot tell 
you how T tremble at the thought of being alone with her at 
Marchmont Towers, I dream sometimes that I am with her in 
the gloomy old house, and that we two are all alone there, even 
the servants all gone, and you far away in India, Edward—at 
the other end of the world.” 

It was as much as her lover could do to soothe and reassure 
the trembling girl when these thoughts took possession of her. 
Had he been less sanguine and impetuous, less careless in the 
buoyancy of his spirits, Captain Arundel might have seen that 
Mary’s nerves had been terribly shaken by the scene between 
her and Olivia, and all the anguish which had given rise to her 
flight from Marchmont Towers. The girl trembled at every 
sound—the shutting of a door, the noise of a cab stopping in 
the street below, the falling of a book from the table to the floor, 
startled her almost as much as if a gunpowder-magazine had 
exploded in the neighborhood. The tears rose to her eyes at the 
slightest emotion. Her mind was tortured by vague fears, 
which she tried to explain to her lover. Her sleep was broken 
by dismal dreams, foreboding visions of shadowy evil. 

For a little more than a fortnight Edward Arundel visited his 
betrothed daily in the shabby first-floor in Oakley Street, and 
sat by her side while she worked at some fragile scrap of em¬ 
broidery, and talked gayly to her of the happy future, to the 
incense admiration of Mrs. Pimpernel; who had no greater de¬ 
light than to assist in the pretty little sentimental drama being 
enacted on her first floor. 

Thus it was that, on a cloudy and autumnal August morning, 
Edward Arundel and Mary Marchmont were married in a great 
emptv-looking church in the parish of Lambeth, by an indiffer¬ 
ent curate, who shuffled through the service at railroad speed, 
and with far less reverence for the solemn rite than he would 
have displayed had he known that the pale-faced girl kneeling 
before the altar-rails-was undisputed mistress of eleven thou¬ 
sand a year. Mrs. Pimpernel, the pew-opener, and the regis¬ 
trar, who was in waiting in the vestry, and was beguiled thence 
to give away the bride, were the only witnesses to this strange 
wedding. It seemed a dreary ceremonial to Mrs. Pimpernel, 
who had been married at the same church five-and-twenty years 
before in a cinnamon satin spencer, and a coal-scuttle bonnet, 
and with a young person in the dressmaking line in attendance 
upon her as oridemaid. 

It was rather a dreary wedding, no doubt. The drizzling rain 
dripped ceaselessly in the street without, and there was a smell 
of damp plaster in the great empty church. The melancholy 
street-cries sounded dismally from the outer world, while the 
curate was hurrying through those portentous words which 
were to unite Edward Arundel and Mary Marchmont until the 
final day of earthly separation. The girl clung shiveringly to 
her lover, her husband now, as they went into the vestry to 
sign their names in the marriage register. Throughout the 
service she had expected to hear a footstep in the aisle behind 


140 JOHN MARCH MONT *8 LEGACY. 

her, and Olivia Marchmont’s cruel voice crying out to forbid the 
marriage, 

“I am your wife now’, Edward, am I not?” she said, when 
she had signed her name in the register. 

“Yes, my darling, forever and forever.” 

“ And nothing can part us now ?” 

“ Nothing but death, my dear.” 

In the exuberance of his spirits, Edward Arundel spoke of the 
King of Terrors as if he had been a mere nobody, whose power 
to change or mar the fortunes of mankind was so trifling as to 
be scarcely worth mentioning. 

The vehicle in waiting to carry the mistress of Marchmont 
Towers upon the first stage of her bridal tour was nothing bet¬ 
ter than a hack cab. The driver’s garments exhaled stale to¬ 
bacco smoke in the moist atmosphere, and in lieu of the flow'ers 
which were wont to bestrew the bridal pathway of an heiress, 
Miss Marchmont trod upon damp and moldy straw’. But she 
was happy—happy, with a fearful apprehension that her happi¬ 
ness could not be real—a vague terror of Olivia’s power to tort¬ 
ure and oppress her, w hich even the presence of her lover-hus¬ 
band could not altogether drive away. She kissed Mrs. Pimper¬ 
nel, who stood upon the edge of the pavement, crying bitterly, 
with the slippery white lining of the new silk dress which Ed¬ 
ward Arundel had given her for the wedding gathered tightly 
round her. 

“ God bless you, my dear!” cried the honest dealer in frayed 
satins and tumbled gauzes; “ I couldn’t take this more to heart 
if you was my own Eliza Jane going away with the young man 
as she was to have married, and as is now a widower with five 
children, two in arms, and the youngest brought up by band. 
God bless your pretty face, my dear, and ob, pray take care of 
her, Captain Arundel, for she’s a tender flower, sir, and truly 
needs your care. And it’s but a trifle, my own sweet young 
missy, for the acceptance of such as you, but it’s given from a 
full heart, and given humbly.” 

The latter part of Mrs. Pimpernel’s speech bore relation to a 
hard newspaper parcel, which she dropped into Mary’s lap. Mrs. 
Arundel opened the parcel presently, when she had kissed her 
humble friend for the last time and the cab was driving toward 
Nine Elms, and found that Mrs. Pimpernel’s wedding-gift was a 
Scotch shepherdess in china, with a great deal of gilding about 
her tartan garments, very red legs, a hat and feathers, and a 
curly sheep. Edward put this article of virtu very carefully 
away in his carpet-bag, for his bride would not have the present 
treated with any show of disrespect. 

“How good of her to give it me!” Mary said; “it used to 
stand upon the back-parlor chimney-piece when I was a little 
girl; nnd I was so fond of it. Of course I am not fond of Scotch 
shepherdesses now, you know, dear; but how should Mrs. Pim¬ 
pernel know that ? She thought it would please me to have this 
one.” 

“ And you’ll put it in the western drawing-room at the Tow¬ 
ers, won’t you, Polly ?” Captain Arundel asked, laughing. 


JOHN MARCHMONT *8 LEGACY . 


141 


“ I won’t put it anywhere to be made fun of, sir,” the young 
bride answered, with some touch of wifely dignity; “ but I’ll 
take*care of it, and never have it broken or destroyed; and Mrs. 
Pimpernel shall see it, when she comes to the Towers—if I ever 
go back therel” she added, with a sudden, change of manner. 

“ If you ever go back there!” cried Edward. k ‘ Why, Polly, 
my dear, Marchmont Towers is your own house. My cousin 
Olivia is only there upon sufferance, and her own good sense 
will tell her she has no right to remain there when she ceases to 
be your frieud and protectress. She is a proud woman, and her 
pride will surely never suffer her to remain where she must feel 
she can be no longer welcome.” 

The young wife’s face turned white with terror at her hus¬ 
band’s words. 

“But I could never ask her to go, Edward,” she said. “I 
wouldn’t turn her out for the world. She may stay there for¬ 
ever if she likes. I never have cared for the place since papa’s 
death; and I couldn’t go back while she is there, I’m so fright¬ 
ened of her, Edward, I’m so frightened of her.” 

The vague apprehension burst forth in this childish cry. 
Edward Arundel clasped his wife to his breast, and bent over her. 
kissing her pale forehead, and murmuring soothing words, as he 
might have done to a child. 

“ My dear, my dear,” he said, “ my darling Mary, this will 
never do; my own love, this is so very foolish,” 

“ I know, I know, Edward; but I can’t help it, I can’t indeed; 
I was frightened of her long ago; frightened of her even the first 
day I saw her, the day you took me to the Rectory; I was 
frightened of her when"papa first told me he meant to marry 
her; and I am frightened of her now; even now that I’m your 
wife, Edward, I’m frightened of her still.” 

Captain Arundel kissed away the tears that trembled on his 
wife’s eyelids; but she had scarcely grown quite composed even 
when the cab stopped at the Nine Elms railway station. It was 
only when she was seated in the carriage with "her husband, and 
the rain cleared away as they advanced further into the heart 
of the pretty pastoral country, that the bride’s sense of happi¬ 
ness and safety in her husband’s protection returned to her. 
But by that time she was able to smile in his face, aud to look 
forward with delight to a brief sojourn in that pretty Hamp¬ 
shire village which Edward had chosen for the scene of his 
honeymoon. 

“ Only a few days of quiet happiness, Polly,” he said; “ a few 
days of utter forgetfulness of all the world except you, and then 
I must be a man of business again, and write to your step¬ 
mother, and my father and mother, and Messrs. Paulette & 
Mathewson, and all the people who ought to know of our mar¬ 
riage.” 


142 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

PAUL’S SISTER. 

Olivia Marchmont shut herself once more in her desolate 
chamber, making no effort to find the runaway mistress of the 
Towers; indifferent as to what the slanderous tongues of her 
neighbors might say of her; hardened, callous, desperate. 

To her father, and to any one else who questioned her about 
Mary’s absence—for the story of the girl’s flight was soon whis¬ 
pered abroad, the servants at the Towers having received no in¬ 
junctions to keep the matter secret—Mrs. Marchmont replied 
with such an air of cold and determined reserve as kept the 
questioners at bay ever afterward. j 

So the Kemberling people, and the Swampington people, and 
all the country gentry within reach of Marchmont Towers, had , 
a mystery and a scandal provided for them, which afforded 
ample scope for repeated discussion, and considerably relieved ) 
the dull monotony of their lives. But there were some ques-| 
tioners whom Mrs. Marchmont found it rather difficult to keep 
at a distance; there were some intruders who dared to force] 
themselves upon the gloomy w oman’s solitude, and who would j 
not understand that their presence was hateful, and their society { 
abhorrent to her. 

These people were a surgeon and his wife, who had newly 
settled at Kemberling; the best practice in the village falliug 
into the market by reason of the death of a steady-going, gray- i 
headed old practitioner, who for many years had shared with 
one opponent the responsibility of watching over the health of 
the Lincolnshire village. 

It was only a week after Mary Marchmont’s flight when these] 
unwelcome guests first came to the Towers. 

Olivia sat alone in her dead husband’s study—the same room 
in which she had sat upon the morning of John Marchmont’s j 
funeral—a dark and gloomy chamber, wainscoted with black- j 
ened oak, and lighted only by r a massive stone-framed Tudor i 
window looking out into the quadrangle, and overshadowed by 1 
that cloistered colonnade beneath whose shelter Edward and 1 
Mary had walked upon the morning of the girl’s flight. This 1 
wainscoted study was an apartment which most women, having ’ 
all the rooms in Marchmont Towers at their disposal, would " 
have been likely to avoid; but the gloom of the chamber I 
harmonized with that horrible gloom which had taken posses-j 
sion of Olivia’s soul, and the widow turned from the sunny * 
western front, as she turned from all the sunlight and gladness 5 
in the universe, to come here, where the summer radiance rarely 
crept through the diamond-panes of the window, where the 
shadow of the cloister shut out the glory of the blue sky. 

She was sitting in this room—sitting near the open wi'udow in 
a high-backed chair of carved and polished oak, with her head - 
resting against the angle of the embayed window, and her 
handsome profile thrown into sharp relief by the dark green : 
cloth curtain, hanging in straight folds from the low ceiling to 


JOHN MARCHMONrS LEGACY. 


. 143 


the ground, and making a somber background to the widow’s 
figure. Mrs. Marchmont had put away all the miserable gew¬ 
gaws and vanities which she had ordered from London in a 
sudden excess of folly or caprice, and had reassumed her 
mourning-robes of lusterless black. She had a book in her hand 
—some new and popular fiction, which all Lincolnshire was 
eager to read; but although her eyes were fixed upon the pages 
before her, and her hand mechanically turned over leaf after 
leaf at regular intervals of time, the fashionable romance was 
only a weary repetition* of phrases, a dull current of words, 
always intermingled with the images of Edward Arundel and 
Mary Marchmont, which arose out of every page to mock the 
he ’ reader. 



flung the book away from her, at last, with a smothered 


cry of rage. 

“ Is there no cure for this diabase ?” she muttered. “ Is there 
no relief except madness or death ?” 

But in the infidelity which had arisen out of her despair this 
woman had grown to doubt if either death or madness could 
bring her oblivion of her anguish. She doubted the quiet of the 
grave, and half believed that the torture of jealous rage and 
slighted love might mingle even with that silent rest, haunting 
her in her coffin, shutting her out of heaven, and following her 
into a darker world, there to be her torment everlastingly. 
There were times when she thought madness must mean forget¬ 
fulness; but there were other moments when she shuddered, 
horror-stricken, at the thought that, in the wandering brain of 
a mad woman, the image of that grief which had caused the 
shipwreck of her senses might still hold its place, distorted and 
exaggerated—a gigantic unreality, ten thousand times more 
terrible than the truth. Remembering the dreams which dis¬ 
turbed her broken sleep—those dreams which, in their feverish 
horror, were little better than intervals of delirium—it is 
scarcely strange if Olivia Marchmont thought thus. 

She had not succumbed without many struggles to her sin 
and despair. Again and again she had abandoned herself to the 
devils at watch to destroy her, and again and again she had 
tried to extricate her soul from their dreadful power; but her 
most passionate endeavors were in vain. Perhaps it was that 
she did not strive aright; it was for this reason, surely, that she 
failed so utterly to arise superior to Jier despair; for otherwise 
that terrible belief attributed to the Calvinists, that some souls 
are foredoomed to damnation, would be exemplified by this 
woman’s experience. She could not forget. She could not put 
away the vengeful hatred that raged like an all-devouring fire 
in her breast, and she cried, in her agony, ‘‘There is no cure 
for this disease!” 

I think her mistake was in this, that she did not go to the 
right physician. She practiced quackery with her soul as some 
people do with their bodies; trying her own remedies rather 
than the simple prescriptions of the Divine Healer of all woes. 
Self-reliant, and scornful of the weakness against which her 
pride revolted, she trusted to her intellect and her will to lift her 


144 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


out of the moral slough into which her soul had gone down. 
She said: 

“I am not a woman to go mad for the love of a boyish face; I 
am not a woman to die for a foolish fancy that the veriest 
school-girl might be ashamed to confess to her companion. I 
am not a woman to do this, and I will cure myself of my folly.” 

Mrs. Marchmont made an effort to take up her old life, with 
its dull round of ceaseless duty, its perpetual self-denial. If she 
had been a Roman Catholic she would# have gone to the nearest 
convent, and prayed to be permitted to take such vows as might 
soonest set a barrier between herself and the world: she would 
have spent the Jong, weary days in perpetual and secret prayer; 
she would have worn deeper indentations upon the stones already 
hollowed by faithful knees. As it was, she made a routine of pen¬ 
ance for herself, after her own fashion; going long distances on 
foot to visit her poor, when she might have ridden in her car¬ 
riage; courting exposure to rain and foul weather; wearing her¬ 
self out with unnecessary fatigue, and returning foot-sore to 
her desolute home, to fall fainting Into the strong arms of her 
grim attendant, Barbara^ 

But this self-appointed penanc£ could not shut Edward 
Arundel and Mary Marchmont from the widow’s mind. Walk¬ 
ing through a fiery furnace their images would have haunted her 
still, vivid and palpable even in the agony of death. The fatigue 
of the long weary walks made Mrs. Marchmont wan and pales 
the exposure to storm and rain brought on a tiresome hacking 
cough, which worried her by day and disturbed her fitful 
slumbers by night. No good whatever seemed to come of her 
endeavors; and the devils who rejoiced at her weakness and 
her failure claimed her as their own. They claimed her as 
their own; and they were not without terrestial agents, work¬ 
ing patiently in their service, and ready to help in securing their 
bargain. 

The great clock in the quadrangle liad struck the half-hour 
after three; the atmosphere of the August afternoon was sultry 
and oppressive. Mrs. Marchmont had closed her eyes after 
flinging aside her book, and had fallen into a doze: her nights 
were broken and wakeful, and the hot stillness of the day had 
made her drowsy. 

She was aroused from this half-slumber by Barbara Simtaons f 
who came into the room carrying two cards upon a salver—the 
same old-fashioned and emblazoned salver upon which Paul 
Marchmont s card bad been brought to the widow nearly three 
years before. The Abigail stood half-way between the door 
and the window by which the widow sat. lookino- at TiAr rmo- 



ni , r •'j ^ trciio iu upten io Her 

She s handsomer than the other one, and cleverer ir$ 


JOHN MARCHMONT 'S LEGACY. 145 

book-learning; but she keeps ’em off—she seems allers to keep 

’em off.” 

I think Olivia Marchmont would have torn the very heart 
out of this waiting-woman’s breast had she known the thoughts 
that held a place in it; had she known that the servant who at¬ 
tended upon her, and took wages from her, dared to pluck out 
her secret, and to speculate upon her suffering. 

The widow awoke suddenly, and looked up with an impatient 
frown. She had not been awakened by the opening of the door, 
but by that unpleasant sensation which almost always reveals 
the presence of a stranger to a sleeper of nervous temperament 

‘‘What is it, Barbara?” she asked; and then, as her eyes 
rested on the cards, she answered, “ Haven’t I told you that I 
would not see any callers to-dav ? 1 am worn out with my 
cough, and feel coo ill to see any one.” 

“Yes, Miss Livy,” the woman answered—she called her mis¬ 
tress by this name still, now and then, so familiar had it grown 
to her during the childhood and youth of the rector’s daughter 
—“ I didn’t forget that, Miss Livy. I told Richardson you was 
not to be disturbed. But the lady and gentleman said if you 
saw what was wrote upon the back of one of the cards you’d be 
sure to make an exception in their favor. I think that was 
what the lady said. She’s a middle-aged lady, very talkative 
and pleasant-mannered,” added the grim Barbara, in nowise re¬ 
laxing the stolid gravity of her own manner as she spoke. 

Olivia snatched the cards from the salver. 

“ Why do people worry me so?” she cried, impatiently. “ Am 
I not to be allowed even five minutes’ sleep without being 
broken in upon by some intruder or other?” 

Barbara Simmons looked at her mistress’ face. Anxiety and 
sadness dimly showed themselves in the stolid countenance of 
the lady’s-maid. A close observer, penetrating below that as¬ 
pect of wooden solemnity which was Barbara’s normal expres¬ 
sion, might have discovered a secret; the quiet waiting-woman 
loved her mistress with a jealous and watchful affection that 
took heed of every change in its object. 

Mrs. Marchmont examined the two.cards, which bore the 
names of Mr. and Mrs. Weston, Kemberling. On the back of 
the lady’s card these words were written in pencil: 

“ Will Mrs. Marchmont be so good as to see Lavinia Weston, 
Paul Marchmont’s younger sister, and a connection of Mrs. M.’s ?” 

Olivia shrugged her shoulders as she threw down the card. 

“ Paul Marchmont! Lavinia Weston!” she muttered; “yes, 
I remdmber he said something about a sister married to a sur 
geon at Stanfield. Let these people come to me, Barbara.” 

The waiting-woman looked doubtfully at her mistress. 

“You’ll maybe smooth your hair and freshen yourself up a 
bit before you see the folks, Miss Livy,” she said, in a tone of 
mingled suggestion and entreaty. “ Ye’ve had a deal of worry 
lately, and it’s made ye look a little fagged and haggard-like. 
J’d not like the Kemberling folks to say as you was ill.” 

Mrs. Marchmont turned fiercely upon the Abigail. 

“ Let me alone!” she cried. “What is it to you, or to any 


146 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

one, how I lool? ? What good have my looks done me that 1 
should worry myself about them?” she added, under her 
breath. “ Show these people in here, if they want to see me.” 

‘‘They’ve been shown into the western drawing*room, ma’am 
—Richardson took ’em in there.” — 

Barbara Simmons fought hard for the preservation of appear¬ 
ances. She wanted the rector’s daughter to receive these 
strange people, who had dared to intrude upon her, in a man¬ 
ner befitting the dignity of John Marchmont’s widow. She 
glanced furtively at the disorder of the gloomy chamber. 
Books and papers were scattered here and there; the hearth 
and low fender were littered with heaps of torn letters—for 
Olivia Marchmont had no tenderness for the memorials of the 
past, and indeed took a fierce delight in sweeping away the un¬ 
sanctified records .of her joyless, loveless life. The high- 
backed oaken chairs had been pushed out of their places; the 
green-cloth had been drawn half off the massive table, and 
hung in trailing folds upon the ground. A book flung here, a 
shawl there, a handkerchief in another place; an open secretary, 
with scattered documents and uncovered ink-stand, littered the 
room, and bore mute witness of the restlessness of its occupants. 
Tt needed no very subtle psychologist to read aright those 
separate tokens of a disordered mind; of a weary spirit, which 
nad sought distraction in a dozen occupations, and had found 
relief in none. It was some vague sense of this that caused 
Barbara Simmons’ anxiety. She wished to keep strangers out 
of this room, in which her mistress—wan, haggard, and wearv- 
looking—revealed her secret by so many signs and tokens. But 
before Olivia could make any answer to her servant’s suggestion, 
the door, which Barbara had left ajar, was {pushed open by a 
very gentle hand, and a sweet voice said, in cheery, chirping 
accents: 

“I am sure I may come in; may I not, Mrs. Marchmont? 
The impression my brother Paul’s description gave me of you 
is such a very pleasant one that I venture to intrude uninvited, 
almost forbidden, perhaps.” 

The voice and manner of the speaker were so airy and self- 
possessed, there was such a world of cheerfulness and amia¬ 
bility in every tone, that, as Olivia Marchmont rose from her 
chair, she put her hand to her head, dazed and confounded, as 
if by the too boisterous caroling of.some caged bird. What did 
they, mean, these accents of gladness, these clear and untroubled 
tones, which sounded shrill and almost discordant in the de¬ 
spairing woman’s weary ears? She stood, pale and worn, the 
very picture of all gloom and misery, staring hopelessly at her 
visitor; too much abandoned to her grief to remember, in, that 
first moment, the stern demands of pride. She stood still, re¬ 
vealing, by her look, her attitude, her silence, her abstraction, 
a whole history to the watchful eyes that were looking at her. 

Mrs. Weston lingered on the threshold of the chamber, in a 
pretty, half-fluttering manner; which was charmingly express¬ 
ive of a struggle between a modest poor-relation-like diffidence 
and an earnest desire to rush into Olivia’s arms. The surgeon’s 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


147 


wife was a delicate-looking little woman, with features that 
seemed a miniature and feminine reproduction of her brother 
Paul’s, and with very light hair—hair so light and pale that, had it 
turned as white as the artist’s in a single night, very few people 
would have been likely to take heed of the change. Lavinia 
Weston was eminently what is generally called a lady-like 
woman. She always conducted herself in that especial and par¬ 
ticular manner which was exactly fitted to the occasion. She 
adjusted her behavior by the nicest shades of color and hair- 
breath scale of measurement. She had, as it were, made for 
herself a homeopathic system of good manners, and could mete 
out politeness and courtesy in the veriest globules, never ad¬ 
ministering either too much or too little. To her husband she 
was a treasure beyond ail price; and if the Lincolnshire surgeon 
—who was a fat, solemn-faced man, with a character as level 
and monotonous as the flats and fens of his native county—was 
hen-pecked, the feminine autocrat held the reins of government 
so lightly that her obedient subject was scarcely aware how very 
irresponsible his wife’s authority had become. 

As Olivia Marchmont stood confronting the timid, hesitating 
figure of the intruder, with the width of the chamber between 
them, Lavinia Weston, in her crisp muslin dress and scarf, her 
neat bonnet and bright ribbons and primly-adjusted gloves, 
looked something like an adventurous canary who had a mind 
to intrude upon the den of a hungry lioness. The difference, 
physical and moral, between the timid bird and the savage 
forest-queen could be scarcely wider than that between the two 
women. 

But Olivia did not stand forever embarrassed and silent in her 
visitor’s preseuce. Her pride came to her rescue. She turned 
sternly upon the polite intruder. 

“ Walk in, if you please, Mrs. Weston,” she said, “and sit 
down. I was denied to you just now because I have been ill, 
and have ordered my servants to deny me to every one.” 

“ But, my dear Mrs. Marchmont,” murmured Lavinia Weston, 
in soft, almost dove-like accents, “ if you have been ill, is not 
your illness another reason for seeing us, rather than for keep¬ 
ing us away from you ? I would not, of -course, say a word 
which could in any way be calculated to give offense to your 
regular medical attendant -you have a regular medical attend¬ 
ant, no doubt; from Swampington, I dare say—but a doctor’s 
wife may often be useful when a doctor is himself out of place. 
There are little nervous ailments—depression of spirits, mental 
uneasiness—from which women, and sensitive women, suffer 
acutely, and which perhaps a woman's more refined nature 
alone can thoroughly comprehend. You are not looking well, 
mv dear Mrs. Marchmont. I left my husband in the drawing¬ 
room for I was so anxious that our first meeting should take 
place’without witnesses. Men think women sentimental when 
they are only impulsive. Weston is a good, simple-hearted 
creature; but he knows as much about a woman’s mind as he 
does of an ^Eolian harp. When the strings vibrate he hears the 
low plaintive notes, but he has no idea, whence the melody 


148 


JOHN MAROHMONT'S LEGACY. 

comes. It is thus with us, Mrs. Marchmout. These medical 
men watch us in the agonies of hysteria; they hear our sighs, 
they see ohr tears, and in their awkwardness and ignorance 
they prescribe commonplace remedies out of the pharmacopoeia. 
No, dear Mrs. Marchmont, you do not look well. I fear it is the 
mind, the mind, which has been overstrained. Is it not so ?” 

Mrs. Weston put her head on one side as she asked this ques¬ 
tion, and smiled at Olivia with an air of gentle insinuation. It 
the doctor’s wife wished to plumb the depths of the widow’s 
gloomy soul she had an advantage here; for Mrs. Marchmont 
was thrown off her guard by the question, which had been, per¬ 
haps, asked haphazard, or, it may be, with a deeply-considered 
design. Olivia turned fiercely upon the polite questioner. 

“ I have been suffering from nothing but a cold which I 
caught the other day,” she said; “ I am not subject to any fine 
lady-like hysteria, I can assure you, Mrs. Weston.” 

The doctor’s wife pursed up her lips into a sympathetic smile, 
not at all abashed by this rebuff. She had seated herself in one 
of the high-backed chairs, with her muslin skirt spread out 
about her. She looked a living exemplification of all that is 
neat and prim and commonplace, in contrast with the pale, 
stern-faced woman, standing rigid and defiant in her long, black 
robes. 

“ How very cby-arming!” exclaimed Mrs. Weston. “ You are 
really not nervous. Dee-ar me; and from what my brother Paul 
said, I should have imagined that any one so highly organized 
must be rather nervous. But I really fear I am ini pertinent, 
and that 1 presume upon our very slight relationship. It is a 
relationship, is it not, although such a very slight one?” 

“I have never thought of the subject,” Mrs. Marchmont re¬ 
plied, coldly. “I suppose, however, that my marriage with 
your brother’s cousin-” 

“ And my cousin-” 

“ Made a kind of connection between us. But Mr. March¬ 
mont gave me to understand that you lived at Stanfield, Mrs, 
Weston.” 

“Until last week, positively until last week,” answered the 
surgeon’s wife. “ I see you take very little interest in village 
gossip, Mrs. Marchmont, or you would have heard of the change 
at Kemberling.” 

“ What change ?” 

“My husband’s purchase of poor old Mr. Da wnfield’s practice. 
The dear old man died a month ago—you heard of his death, of 
course—and Mr. Weston negotiated the purchase with Mrs. 
Dawnfield in less than a fortnight. We came here early last 
week, and already we are making friends in the neighborhood. 
How strange that you should not have heard of our coming!” 

“I do not see much society,” answered Olivia, indifferently, 
“ and I hear nothing of the Kemberling people.” 

“Indeed!” cried Mrs. Weston, “and we hear so much of 
Marchmont Towers at Kemberling.” 

She looked full in the widow’s face as she spoke, her stereo- 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


149 

typed smile subsiding into a look of greedy curiosity; a look 
whose intense eagerness could not be concealed. 

That look, and the tone in which her last sentence had been 
spoken, said as plainly as the plainest words could have done, 
** I have heard of Mary Marchmont’s flight.” 

Olivia understood this; but in the passionate depth of her own 
madness she had no power to fathom the meanings or the mo¬ 
tives of other people. She revolted against this Mrs. Weston, 
and disliked her because the woman intruded upon her in her 
desolation; but she never once thought of Lavinia Weston’s in¬ 
terest in Mary’s movements; she never once remembered that 
the frail life of that orphan girl only stood between this woman’s 
brother and the rich heritage of Marchmont Towers. 

Blind and forgetful of everything in the hideous egotism of 
her despair, what was Olivia Marchmout but a fitting tool, a 
plastic and easily-molded instrument, in the hands of unscrupu¬ 
lous people, whose hard intellects had never been beaten into 
confused shapelessness in the fiery furnace of passion ? 

Mrs. Weston had heard of Mary Marchmont's flight; but she 
had heard half a dozen different reports of that event, as-widely 
diversified in their details as if half a dozen heiresses had fled 
from Marchmout Towers. Every gossip in the place had a sepa¬ 
rate story as to the circumstances which had led to the girl’s 
running away from her home. The accounts vied with each 
other in graphic force and minute elaboration; the conversations 
that had taken place between Mary and her step-mother, be¬ 
tween Edward Arundel and Mrs. Marchmout, between the Rector 
of Swampington and nobody in particular, would have filled a 
volume, as related by the gossips of Kemberling; but as every¬ 
body assigned a different cause for the terrible misunderstanding 
at the Towers, and a different direction for Mary’s flight—and 
as the railway official at the station, who could have thrown 
some light on the subject, was a stern and moody man, who had 
little sympathy with his kind, and held his tongue persistently— 
it was not easy to get near the truth. Under these circum¬ 
stances, then, Mrs. Weston determined upon seeking information 
at the fountain-head, and approaching the cruel step-mother, 
who, according to some of the reports, bad starved and beaten 
her dead husband’s child. 

“ Yes, dear Mrs. Marchmout,” said Lavinia Weston, seeing 
that it was necessary to come direct to the point if she wished 
to wring the truth from Olivia; “ yes, we hear of everything at 
Kemberling; and I need scarcely tell you that we heard of the 
sad trouble which you have had to endure since your ball—the 
ball that is spoken of as the most cby-arming entertainment re¬ 
membered in the neighborhood for a long time. We heard of 
this sad girl's flight.” 

Mrs. Marchmont looked up with a dark frown, but made no 
answer. 

“ Was she—it really is such a very painful question, that I al- 
m<^t shrink from—but was Miss Marchmont at all—eccentric— 
a little mentally deficient ? Pray pardon me if I have given you 
pain by such a question; but-” 


150 JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

Olivia started, and looked sharply at her visitor. “ Mentally 
deficient? No!” she said. But as she spoke her eyes dilated, 
her pale cheeks grew paler, her upper lip quivered with a faint 
convulsive movement. It seemed as if some idea presented 
itself to her with a sudden force that almost took away her 

breath. T . . TTT , .. , 

•* Not mentally deficient!” repeated Lavinia Weston; dee-ar 
me! It’s a great comfort to hear that. Of course Paul saw 
very little of his cousin, and he was not, therefore, in a position 
to judge—though his opinions, however rapidly arrived at, are 
generally so very accurate—but he gave me to understand that 
he thought Miss Marchmont appeared a little—just a little 
—weak in her intellect. I am very glad to find he was mis¬ 
taken.” 

Olivia made no reply to this speech. She had seated herself 
in her chair by the window; she looked straight before her into 
the flagged quadrangle, with her hands lying idly in her lap. 
It seemed as if she were actually unconscious of her visit¬ 
ors presence, or as if, in her scornful indifference, she did 
not even care to affect any interest in that visitor’s conversa¬ 
tion. 

Lavinia Weston returned again to the attack. 

“Pray, Mrs. Marchmont, do not think me intrusive or im¬ 
pertinent,” she said, pleadingly, “ if I ask you to favor me with 
the true particulars of this sad event. I am sure you will be 
good enough to remember that my brother Paul, my sister, and 
myself are Mary Marchmont’s nearest relatives on her father’s 
side and that we have, therefore, some right to feel interested in 
her.” 

By this very polite speech Lavinia Weston plainly reminded 
the widow of the insignificance of her own position at March¬ 
mont Towers. In her ordinary frame of mind Olivia would 
have resented the lady-like slight; but to-day she neither heard 
nor heeded it; she was brooding with a stupid, unreasonable 
persistency over the words “mental deficiency,” “ weak intel¬ 
lect.” She only roused herself by a great effort to answer Mrs. 
Weston’s question when that lady had repeated it in very plain 
words. 

“ I can tell you nothing about Miss Marchmont’s flight,” she 
said, coldly, “except that she chose to run away from her 
home. I found reason to object to her conduct upon the night 
of the ball; and the next morning she left the house, assigning 
no reason—to me, at any rate—for her absurd and improper be¬ 
havior.” 

“ She assigned no reason to you, my dear Mrs. Marchmont; 
but she assigned a reason to somebody, I infer, from what you 
say ?” 

“ Yes; she wrote a letter to my cousin, Captain Arundel.” 

“ Telling him the reason of her departure ?” 

“ I don’t know—I forget. The letter told nothing clearly; it 
was wild and incoherent.” 

Mrs. AVeston sighed; along-drawn, desponding sigh. 

“ Wild and incoherent!” she murmured, in a pensive tone. 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


151 


“ How grieved Paul will be to hear of this! He took such an 
interest in his cousin—a delicate and fragile-looking young 
creature, he told me. Yes, he took a very great interest in her, 
Mrs. Marchmont, though you may, perhaps, scarcely believe me 
when I say so. He kept himself purposely aloof from this place; 
his sensitive nature led him to abstain from even revealing his 
interest in Miss Marchmont. His position, you must remember, 
with regard to this poor, dear girl, is a very delicate—I may say 
a very painful—one.” 

Olivia remembered nothing. The value of the Marchmont 
estates; the sordid worth of those wide-stretching farms, 
spreading far away into Yorkshire; the pitiful, closely-calcu¬ 
lated revenue, which made Mary a wealthy heiress, were so far 
from the dark thoughts of this woman’s desperate heart, that 
she no more suspected Mrs. Weston of any mercenary design in 
coming to the Towers than of burglarious intentions with regard 
to the silver spoons in the plate-room. She only thought that 
the surgeon’s wife was a tiresome woman against whose perti¬ 
nacious civility her angry spirit chafed and rebelled, until she 
was almost driven to order her from the room. 

In this cruel weariness of spirit Mrs. Marchmont gave a short 
impatient sigh, which afforded sufficient hint to such an accom¬ 
plished tatician as her visitor.” 

“ I know I have tired you, my dear Mrs. Marchmont,” the 
doctor’s wife said, rising and arranging her muslin scarf as she 
spoke, in token of her immediate departure; “I am so sorry to 
find you a sufferer from that nasty hacking cough; but of course 
you have the best advice, Mr. Poolton from Swampington, I 
think you said?”—Olivia had said nothing of the kind—“ and I 
trust the warm weather will prevent the-cough taking any hold 
of your chest. If I might venture to suggest flannels—so many 
young women quite ridicule the idea of flannels—but, as the wife 
of a bumble provincial practitioner, I have learned their value. 
Good-bye, dear Mrs. Marchmont. I may come again, may I not, 
now that the ice is broken, and we are so well acqainted with 
each other? Good-bye.” 

Olivia could not refuse to take at least one of the two plump / 
and tightly-gloved hands which were held out to her with an air' 
of frank cordiality; but the widow’s grasp was loose and nerve¬ 
less, and inasmuch as two consentient parties are required to the 
shaking of hands, as well as to the getting up of a quarrel, the 
salutation was not a very hearty one. 

The surgeon’s pony must have been weary of standing before 
the flight of shallow steps leading to the western portico, when 
Mrs. Weston took her seat by her husband’s side in the gig, 
which had been newly-painted and varnished since the worthy 
couple’s hegir:, from Stanfield. 

The surgeon was not an ambitious man, nor a designing man; 
he was simply stupid and lazy; lazy, although, in spite of himself, 
he led an active :md hard-working life; but there are many 
square men hose sides are cruelly tortured by the pressure of 
the round holes into which they are ill-advisedly thrust, and if 
our destinies were meted out to us in strict accordance with our 


i5§ 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

temperaments, Mr. Weston should liave been a lotus-eater. As 
it was, he was content to drudge on, mildly complying with 
every desire of his wife; doing what she told him, because it 
was less trouble to do the hardest work at her bidding than to 
oppose her. It would have been surely less painful to Macbeth 
to have finished that ugly business of the murder than to have 
endured my lady’s black contemptuous scowl, ana the bitter 
scorn and contumely concentrated in those four words Crive 

me the daggers!” , ’ , . 

Mr. Weston asked one or two commonplace questions about 
his wife’s interview with John Marchmont’s widow; but slowly 
apprehending that Lavinia did not care to discuss the matter, 
he relapsed into meek silence, and devoted all his intellectual 
powers to the task of keeping the pony out of the deeper ruts m 
the rugged road between Marchmont Towers and Kemberlmg 
High Street. 

“ What is the secret of that woman's life? thought Lavinia 
Weston during that homeward drive; “ has she ill-treated the 
girl, or is she plotting in some way or other to get hold of the 
Marchmont fortune? Pshaw! that’s impossible. And yet she 
may be making a purse, somehow or other, out of the estate. 
Anyhow, there is bad blood between the two women.” 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

A STOLEN HONEYMOON. 

The village to which Edward Arundel took his bride was with¬ 
in a few miles of Winchester. The young soldier had become 
familiar with the place in his early boyhood, when he had gone 
to spend a part of one bright mid-summer holiday at the house 
of a school-fellow; and had ever since cherished a friendly re¬ 
membrance of the winding trout-streams, the rich verdure of 
the valleys, and the sheltering hills that shut in the pleasant lit¬ 
tle cluster of thatched cottages, the pretty white-walled villas, 
and the gray old church. 

But to Mary, whose experiences of town and country were 
limited to the dingy purlieus of Oakley Street and the fenny 
fiats of Lincolnshire, this Hampshire village seemed a rustic 
paradise, which neither trouble nor sorrow could ever approach. 
She had trembled at the thought of Olivia’s coming in Oakley 
Street; but here she seemed to lose all terror of her stern step¬ 
mother—here, sheltered and protected by her young husband’s 
love, she fancied that she might live her life out happy and 
secure. 

She told Edward this one sunny morning, as they sat by the 
young man's favorite trout-stream. Captain Arundel's fishing- 
tackle lay idle on the turf at his side, for he had been beguiled 
into forgetfulness of a ponderous trout he had been watching 
and finessing with for upward of an hour, and had flung him¬ 
self at full length upon the mossy margin of the water, with 
his uncovered head lying in Mary’s lap. 

The childish bride would have "been content to sit forever thus 
in that rural solitude, with her fingers twisted in her husband’s 


153 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY,, 

chestnut curls, and her soft eyes keeping timid watch upon his 
handsome face—so candid and unclouded in its careless repose. 
The undulating meadow-land lay half hidden in a golden haze! 
only broken here and there by the glitter of the brighter sun¬ 
light that lit up the rippling waters of the wandering streams 
that intersected the low pastures. The massive towers of the 
cathedral, the gray walls of St. Cross, loomed dimly in the dis¬ 
tance: the bubbling plash of a mill-stream sounded like some 
monotonous lullaby in the drowsy summer atmosphere. Mary 
looked from the face she loved to the fair landscape about her. 
and a tender solemnity crept into her mind, a reverent love and 
admiration for this beautiful earth, which was almost akin to 
awe. 

“ How pretty this place is, Edward!” she said, “ I had no idea 
there were such places in all the wide world. Do you know, I 
think I would rather be a cottage-girl here than an heiress in 
Lincolnshire. Edward, if I ask you a favor, will you grant it?” 

She spoke very earnestly, looking down at her husband’s up¬ 
turned face; but Captain Arundel only laughed at her question, 
without even caring to lift the drowsy eyelids that drooped over 
his blue eyes. 

“Well, my pet, if you want anything short of the moon, I 
suppose your devoted husband is scarcely likely to refuse it. 
Our honeymoou is not a fortnight old yet, Polly dear; you 
wouldn’t have me turn tyrant quite as soon as this. Speak out, 
Mrs. Arundel, aud assert your dignity as a British matron. 
What is the favor I am to grant?” 

“ I want you to live here always, Edward darling,” pleaded 
the girlish voice. “ Not for a fortnight or a month, but forever 
and ever. I have never been happy at Marchmont Towers. 
Papa died there, you know, and I cannot forget that. Perhaps 
that ought to have made the place sacred to me; and sc it has; 
but it is sacred like papa’s tomb in Kemberling Church, and it 
seems like profanation to be happy in it, or to forget my dead 
father even for a moment. Don’t let us go back there, Edward. 
Let my step-mother live there all her life. It would seem self¬ 
ish and cruel to turn her out of the house she has so long been 
mistress of. Mr. Gormby will go on collecting the rents, you 
know, and can send us as much money as we want; and we can 
take that pretty house we saw to let on the other side of Mill- 
dale—the house with the rookery, and the dove-cots, and the 
sloping lawn leading down to the water. You know you don’t 
like Lincolnshire, Edward, auy more than I do, and there’s 
scarcely any trout-fishing near the Towers.” 

Captain Arundel opened his eyes, and lifted himself out of 
his reclining position before he answered his wife. 

“My own precious Polly,” he said, smiling fondly at the 
gentle childish face turned in such earnestness toward bis own; 
“ my runaway little wife, rich people have their duties to per 
form as well as poor people; and I am afraid it would never do 
for you to bide in this out-of-the-way Hampshire village, and 
play absentee from stately Marchmont and all its dependencies. 
I love that pretty, infantile, unworldly spirit of your?, my day? 


154 


JOHN MARCHMONT \S LEGACY. 

ling; and I sometimes wish we were two grown-up babes in the 
woods, and could wander about gathering wild flowers, and 
eating black-berries and hazel nuts, until the shades of evening 
closed in, and the friendly robins came to bury us. Don’t fancy 
I’m tired of our honeymoon, Polly, or that I care for March- 
mont Towers any more than you do, but I fear the non-residence 
plan would never answer. The world would call my little wife 
eccentric, if she ran away from her grandeur; and Paul March- 
mont, the artist—of whom your poor father had rather a bad 
opinion, by the way—would be taking out a statute of lunacy 
against you.” 

“ Paul Marcbmont!” repeated Mary. “ Did papa dislike Mr. 
Paul Marchmont ?” 

“ Well, poor John had a sort of a prejudice against the man, 
I believe; but it was only a prejudice, for he freely confessed 
that he could assign no reason for it. But, whatever Mr. Paul 
Marchmont may be, you must live at the Towers, Mary, and be 
Lady Bountiful-in-chief in your neighborhood, and look after 
your property, and have long interviews with Mr. Gormby, and 
become altogether a woman of business; so that when I go back 
to India-” 

Mary interrupted him with a little cry: 

“Go back to India!” she exclaimed. “What do you mean, 
Ed’w ard ?” 

“ I mean, my darling, that my business in life is to fight for 
my queen and country, and not to sponge upon my wife’s fort¬ 
une. You don’t suppose I’m going to lay down my sword at 
seven-and-twenty years of age, and retire upon my pension ? 
No, Polly; you remember what Lord Nelson said on the deck 
of the Victory. That saying can never be so hackneyed as 
to lose its force. I must do my duty, Polly; I must do my duty ; 
even if duty and love pull different ways, and I have to leave my 
darling, in the service of my country.’’ 

Mary clasped her hands in despair, and looked piteously at her 
lover-husband, with the tears streaming down her pale cheeks. 

“Oh, Edward,” she cried, “how cruel you are; how very, 
very cruel you are to me! What is the use of my fortune if you 
won’t share it with me—if you won’t take it all; for it is yours, 
my dearest; it is all yours; I remember the wor^s in the mar 
riage service, ‘ with all my goods I thee endow.’ I have given 
you Marchmont Towers, Edward; nobody in the world can take 
it away from you. You never, never, never could be so cruel as 
to leave me. I know how brave and good you are, and I am 
proud to think of your noble courage, and all the brave deeds you 
did in India. But you have fought for your country, Edward; you 
have done your duty. Nobody can expect more of you; nobody 
shall take you from me. Oh, my darling, my husband, you 
promised to shelter and defend me while our lives last! You 
won’t leave me—you won’t leave me, will you ?” 

Edward Arundel kissed the tears away from his wife’s pale 
face, and drew her head upon his bosom. 

“My love,” he said tenderly, “you cannot tell how much 
V am it gives me to hear you talk like this, What can I do? To 


JOHN MARCIIMONT'S LEGACY, 


155 


give up my profession would be to make myself next kiu to a 
pauper. What would the world say of me, Mary? Think of 
that. This runaway marriage would be a dreadful dishonor 
to me if it were followed by a life of lazy independence on my 
wife’s fortune. Nobody can dare to slander the soldier who 
spends the brightest years of his life in the service of his 4 country. 
You would not surely have me be less than true to mvseif, 
Mary darling? For my honor’s sake I must leave you.” 

“ Oh, no, no, no!” cried the girl, in a low wailing voice. 

Unselfish and devoted as she had been in every other crisis of 
her young life she could not be reasonable or self-denying here; 
she was seized with despair at the thought of parting with her 
husband. No, not even for his honor’s sake could she let him 
go. Better that they should both die now, in this early noon¬ 
tide of their happiness. 

“ Edward, Edward,” she sobbed, clinging convulsively about 
the young man’s neck, “ don’t leave me; don’t leave me!” 

“ Will you go with me to India, then, Mary?” 

She lifted her head suddenly, and lookel her husband in the 
face, with the gladness in her eyes shining through her tears, 
like an April sun through a watery sky. 

“ I would go to the end of the world with you, my own dar¬ 
ling,” she said; “the burning sands and the dreadful jungles 
would have no terrors for me if I were with you, Edward.” 

Captain Arundel smiled at her earnestness. 

“I won’t take you into the jungle, my love,” he answered, 
playfully; “ or, if I do, your palki shall be well guarded, and 
all ravenous beasts kept at a respectful distance from my little 
wife. A great many ladies go to India with their husbands, 
Polly, and come back very little the worse for the climate or 
the voyage; and except your money, there is no reason you 
should not go with me.” 

“ Oh, never mind my money; let anybody have that.” 

“ Polly,” cried the soldier, very seriously, “ we must consult 
Richard Paulette as to the future. I don’t think I did right in 
marrying you during his absence, and I have delayed writing 
to him too long, Polly. Those letters must be written this aft¬ 
ernoon.” 

“ The letter to Mr. Paulette and to your father ?” 

“ Yes; and the letter to my Cousin Olivia.” 

Mary’s face grew sorrowful again, as Captain Arundel said 
this. 

“ Must you tell my step-mother of our marriage?” she said. 

“ Most assuredly, my dear. Why should we keep her in igno¬ 
rance of it ? Your father’s will gave her the privilege of advis¬ 
ing you, but not the power to interfere with your choice, what¬ 
ever that choice might be. You were your own mistress, Mary, 
when you married me. What reason have you to fear my 
Cousin Olivia ?” 

“ No reason, perhaps,” the girl answered, sadly; “ but I do 
fear her. I know I am very foolish, Edward, and you have 
reason to despise me—you, who are so brave. But 1 could 
never tell you how I tremble at the thought of being once more 


156 


JOHN MARCHMONVS LEGACY. 


in my step-mother’s power. She said cruel things to me, Ed¬ 
ward. Every word she spoke seemed to stab me to the heart; 
but it isn’t that only. There’s something more than that; some¬ 
thing that I can’t describe, that I can’t understand; sometning 
which tells me that she hates me.” 

“ Hates you, darling?” 

“ Yes, Edward, yes; she hates me. It wasn’t always so, you 
know. She used to be only cold and reserved; but lately her 
manner has changed. I thought that she was ill, perhaps, and 
that my presence worried her. People often wish to be alone, I 
know, when they are ill. O, Edward, I have seen her shrink 
from me, and shudder if her dress Crushed against mine, as if I 
had been some horrible creature. What have I done, Edward, 
that she should hate me ?” 

Captain Arundel knitted his brows, and set himself to work 
out this womanly problem; but he could make nothing of it. 
Yes, what Mary had said was perfectly true; Olivia hated her. 
The young man had seen that upon the morning of the girl’s 
flight from Marchmont Towers. He had seen vengeful fury 
and vindictive passion raging in the dark face of John March- 
mont’s widow. But what reason could the woman have for 
her hatred of this innocent girl? Again and again Olivia’s 
cousin asked himself this question; and he was so far away 
from the truth at last that he could only answer it by imag¬ 
ining the lowest motive for the widow’s bad feeling. “She 
envies my poor little girl her fortune and position,” he thought. 

“But you won’t leave me alone with my step mother, will 
you, Edward?” Mary said, recurring to her old prayer. “I 
am not afraid of her, nor of anybody or anything in the 
world, while you are with me—how should I be?—but I think, 
if I were to be alone with her again, I should die. She would 
speak to me again as she spoke upon the night of the ball, 
and her bitter taunts would kill me. I could not bear to be 
in her power again, Edward.” 

“ And you shall not, my darling,” answered the young man, 
enfolding the slender, trembling figure in his strong arms. 
“My own childish pet, you shall never be exposed to any 
woman’s insolence or tyranny. You shall be sheltered and 
protected, and hedged in on every side by your husband’s love. 
And when I go to India you shallsail with me, my pearl. Mary, 
look up and smile at me, and let’s have no more talk of cruel 
step-mother’s. How strange it seems to . me, Polly dear, that 
you should have been so womanly when you were a child, and 
yet are so childlike now you are a woman!” 

The mistress of Marchmont Towers looked doubtfully at her 
husband, as if she feared her childishness might be displeasing 
to him. 

“ You don’t love me any the less because of that, do you, Ed¬ 
ward?” she asked, timidly. 

“ Because of what, my treasure ?” 

“ Because I am so—childish ?” 

“ Polly,” cried the young man. “ do you think Jupiter liked 
Hebe any the less because she was as fresh and innocent as the 


15? 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

nectar she served out to him? If he had, my dear, he’d have 
sent for Clotho, or Atropos, or some one or other of the elderly 
maiden ladies of Hades, to wait upon him as cup-bearer. I 
wouldn’t have you otherwise than you are, Polly, by so much as 
one thought.” 

The girl looked up at her husband in a rapture of innocent 
affection. 

“ I am too happy, Edward,” she said, in a low, awe-stricken 
whisper. “ I am too happy. So much happiness can never 
last.” 

Alas! the orphan girl’s experience of this life had early taught 
her the lesson which some people learn so late. She had learned 
to distrust the equal blue of a summer sky, the glorious splendor 
of the blazing sunlight. She was accustomed to sorrow; but 
these brief glimpses of perfect happiness filled her with a dim 
sense of terror. She felt like some earthly wanderer who had 
strayed across the threshold of Paradise. In the midst of her 
delight and admiration she trembled for the moment in which 
the ruthless angels, bearing flaming swords, should drive her 
from the celestial gates. 

“ It can’t last, Edward,” she murmured. 

“ Can’t last, Polly!” cried the young man; “why, my dove is 
transformed all at once into a raven. We have outlived our 
troubles, Polly, like the hero and heroine in one of your novels; 
and w hat is to prevent our Jiving happy ever afterward, like 
them? If you remember, my dear, no sorrows or trials ever fall 
to the lot of people after marriage. The persecutions, the sep¬ 
arations, the estrangements, are all antenuptial. When once 
your true novelist gets his hero and heroine up to the altar rails 
in real earnest—he gets them into church sometimes, and then 
forbids the bans, or brings a former wife, or a rightful husband, 
pale and denouncing, from behind a pillar, and drives the 
wretched pair out again, to persecute them through three hun¬ 
dred pages more before he lets them get back again—but when 
once the important words are spoken and the knot tied the story’s 
done, and the happy couple get forty or fifty years’ wedded 
bliss as a set-off against the miseries they have endured in the 
troubled course of a twelve-month’s courtship. That’s the sort 
of thing, isn’t it, Polly ?” 

The clock of St. Cross, sounding faintly athwart the meadows, 
struck three as the young man finished speaking. 

“Three o’clock, Polly!” he cried; “we must go home, my 
pet. I meant to be business like to-day.” 

Upon each day in that happy honeymoon holiday, Captain 
Arundel bad made some such declaration with regard to his in¬ 
tention of being business like; that is to say, setting himself de¬ 
liberately to the task of writing those letters which should an¬ 
nounce and explain his marriage to the people who had a right 
to hear of it. But the soldier had a dislike to all letter-writing, 
and a special horror of any epistolary communication which 
could come under the denomination of a business-letter; so the 
easy summer-days slipped by, the delicious drowsy noontides, 
the soft and dreamy twilight, the tender moonlit nights—and 


158 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


the captain put off the task for which he had no fancy, from 
after breakfast until after dinner, and from after dinner until 
after breakfast; always beguiled away from his open traveling- 
desk by a word from Mary, who called him to the window T to 
look at a pretty child on the village green before the inn, or at 
the blacksmiths dog, or the tinker’s donkey, or a tired Italian 
organ-boy who bad strayed into that out-of-the-way nook, or at 
the smart butcher from Winchester, who rattled over in a pony- 
cart twice a week to take orders from the gentry round about, 
and to insult and defy the local purveyor, whose stock generally 
seemed to consist of one leg of mutton and a dish of pig’s fry. 

The young couple walked slowly through the meadows, cross¬ 
ing rustic wooden bridges that spanned the winding stream, 
loitering to look down into the clear water at the fish which 
Captain Arundel pointed out, but which Mary could never see, 
that young lady always fixing her eyes upon some long trailing 
weed afloat in the transparent water, while the slivery trout in¬ 
dicated by her husband glided quietly away to the sedgy bottom 
of the stream. They lingered by the water-mill, beneath whose 
shadow some children were fishing; they seized upon every pre¬ 
text for lengthening that sunny homeward walk, and only 
reached the inn as the village-clocks were striking four, at 
which hour Captain Arundel had ordered dinner. 

But after the simple little repast, mild and artless in its 
nature as the fair young spirit of the bride herself; after the 
landlord, sympathetic yet respectful, had in his own person at¬ 
tended upon his two guests; after the pretty rustic chamber had 
been cleared of all evidence of the meal that had been eaten— 
Edward Arundel began to seriously consider the business in 
hand. 

“ The letters must be written, Polly,” he said, seating himself 
at a table near the open window. Trailing branches of jasmine 
and honeysuckle made a frame-work round the diamond-paned 
casement; the scented blossoms blew into the room with every 
breath of the warm August breeze, and hung trembling in the 
folds of the chintz curtains. Mr. Arundel’s gaze wandered 
dreamily away through this open window to the primitive 
picture without—the scattered cottages upon the other side of 
the green, the cattle standing in the pond, the cackling geese 
hurrying homeward across I he purple ridge of common, the 
village gossips loitering beneath the faded sign that hung before 
the low white tavern at the angle of the road. He looked at all 
these things as he flung his leathern desk upon the table, and 
made a great parade of unlocking and opening it. 

“ The letters must be written,” he repeated, with a smothered 
sigh. “ Did you ever notice a peculiar property in stationery, 
Polly ?” 

Mrs. Edward Arundel only opened her brown eyes to their 
widest extent, and stared at her husband. 

“ No; I see you haven’t,” said the young man. “ How should 
you, you fortunate Polly ? you’ve never had to write any busi¬ 
ness-letters yet, though you are an heiress. The peculiarity of 
all stationery, my dear, is, that it is possessed of an intuitive 


JOHN VAtiCEMONT’S LEGACY 


159 


knowledge of the object for which it is to be used. If one has 
to write an unpleasant letter, Polly, it might go a little smoother, 
you know; one might round one’s paragraphs, and spell the 
difficult words—the ‘believes’ and ‘receives,’ the ‘tills’ and 
‘ untils,’ and all that sort of thing—better with a pleasant pen, 
an easy-goiDg, jolly, soft-nibbed quill, that would seem to say, 
‘ Cheer up, old fellow, I’ll carry you through it; we’ll get to 
“ your very obedient servant,” before you know where you are,’ 
and so on. But, bless your heart, Polly, let a poor, unbusiness-like 
fellow try to write a business-letter, and everything goes against 
him. The pen knows what lie’s at, and jibs and stumbles and 
shies about the paper like a broken-dow n screw’; the ink turns 
thick and lumpy, the paper gets as greasy as a London pavement 
after a fall of snow, till a poor fellow gives up, and knocks 
under to the force of circumstances. You see if my pen doesn’t 
splutter, Polly, the moment I address Richard Paulette.” 

Captain Arundel was very careful in the adjustment of his 
sheet of paper , and began his letter with an air of resolution: 

“ White Hart Inn, Milldale, near Winchester, August 14. 

“ My dear Sir-” 

He wrote as much as this with great promptitude, and then, 
with his elbow on the table, fell to staring at his pretty young 
wife and drumming his fingers on his chin. Mary was sitting 
opposite her husband at the open window’, working, or making 
a pretense of being occupied w ith some impossible fragment of 
Berlin wool-work, while she watched her husband. 

“How pretty you look in that w’hite frock, Polly!” said the 
soldier; “you call those things frocks, don’t you? And that 
blue sash, too—you ought always to wear white, Mary, like your 
namesakes abroad who are vouee au bland by their faithful 
mothers, and who are a blessing to the laundresses for the first 
seven or fourteen years of their lives. What shall I say to 
Paulette? He’s such a jolly fellow, there oughtn’t to be much 
difficulty about the matter. ‘ My dear sir,’ seems absurdly stiff , 
• My dear Paulette’—that’s better— -1 write this to inform you 
that your client, Miss Mary March-’ What’s that, Polly?” 

It was the postman, a youth upon a pony, with the afternoon 
letters from London Captain Arundel flung down his pen and 
went to the window. He had some interest in this young man's 
arrival, as he had left orders that such letters as were addressed 
to him at the hotel in Covent Garden should be forwarded to 
him at Milldale. 

“ I dare say there’s a letter from Germany, Polly,” he said, 
eagerly. “ My mother and Leiitia are capital correspondents; 
I’ll wager anything there’s a letter, and I can answer it in the 
one I’m going to write this evening, and that’ll be lulling two 
birds with one stone. I’ll run down to the postman, Polly.’ 

Captain Arundel had good reason to go after his letters ; for 
there seemed little chance of those missives being brought to 
him. The youthful postman was standing in the porch drink¬ 
ing ale out of a ponderous earthenware mug, and talking to i > 
landlord, when Edward went down, 

“Any letters for me, Dick?” the captain asked. He knew the 


IfJO JOHN MAHCHMONT'S LEG ACT. 

Christian name of almost every visitor or hanger-on at the little 
inn, though he had not stayed there an entire fortnight, and was 
as popular and admired as if he had been some free-spoken 
young squire to whom all the land round about belonged. 

“’Ees, sir," the young man answered, shuffling off his cap; 
“ there be two letters for ye.” 

He handed the two packets to Captain Arundel, who looked 
doubtfully at the address of the uppermost, which, like the 
other, haci been redirected by the people at the London hotel. 
The original address of this letter was in a handwriting that 
was stiange to him; but it bore the post mark of the village 
from which the Dangerfield letters were sent. 

The back of the inn looked into an orchard, and through an 
open door opposite to the porch Edward Arundel saw the low 
branches of the trees, and the ripening fruit red and golden in 
the afternoon sunlight. He went out into this orchard to read 
his letters, his mind a little disturbed by the strange handwrit¬ 
ing upon the Dangerfield epistle. 

The letter was from his father’s housekeeper, imploring him 
most earnestly to go down to the Park without delay. Squire 
Arundel had been seized with an attack of paralysis, and was 
declared to be in imminent danger. Mrs. and Miss Arundel and 
Mr. Reginald were away in Germany. The faithful old servant 
implored the younger son to lose no time in hurrying home, if 
he wished to see his father alive. 

The soldier stood leaning against the gnarled gray trunk of 
an old apple-tree, staring at this letter with a white awe-stricken 
face. 

What was he to do? He must go to his father, of course. He 
mnst go without a moment’s delay. He must catch the first 
train that would carry him westward from Southampton. 
There could be no question as to his duty. He must go; he 
must leave his young wife. 

His heart sank with a sharp thrill of pain, and with perhaps 
some faint shuddering sense of an unknown terror, as he 
thought of this. 

“ It was lucky I didn't write the letters,” he reflected; “ no 
one will guess the secret of my darling’s retreat. She can stay 
here till I come back to her. God knows I shall hurry back 
the moment my duty sets me free. These people will take care 
of her. No one will know where to look for her. I’m very 
glad I didn’t write to Olivia. We were so happy this morn¬ 
ing! Who could think that sorrow would come between us so 
soon ?” 

Captain Arundel looked at his watch. It was a quarter to 
six o’clock, and he knew that an express left Southampton 
for the west at eight. There would be time for him to catch 
that train with the help of a sturdy pony belonging to the land¬ 
lord of the White Hart, which would rattle him over to the 
station in an hour and a half. There would be time for him to 
catch the train; but, oh, how little time to comfort his darling; 
how little time to reconcile his young wife to the temporary 
separation! 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


161 


He hurried back to the porch, briefly explained to the landlord 
what had happened, ordered the pony and gig to be got ready 
immediately, and then went very, very slowly up stairs, to the 
room in which his young wife sat by the open window waiting 
for his return. 

Mary looked up at his face as he entered the room, and that 
one glance told her of some new sorrow. 

Edward,” she cried, starting up from her chair with a look 
of terror, “ my stepmother has come!” 

Even in his trouble the young man smiled at his foolish wife’s 
all-absorbing fear of Olivia March mont. 

“ No, my darling,” he said; “ I wish to Heaven our worst 
trouble were the chance of your father’s widow breaking in upon 
us. Something has happened, Mary; something very sorrowful, 
very serious for me. My father is ill, Polly dear, dangerously 
ill, and I must go to him.” 

Mary Arundel drew a long breath. Her face bad, grown very 
white, and the hands that were linked tightly together upon her 
husband’s shoulder trembled a little. 

“ I will try to bear it,” she said; “ I will try to bear it.” 

“ God bless you, my darling,” the soldier answered, fervently, 
clasping his young wife to his breast. “ I know you will It 
will be a very short parting, Mary dearest. I will come back to 
you directly I have seen my father. If he is worse there will be 
little need for me to stop at Dangerfiekl; if he is better, I can 
take you back there with me My own darling love, it is very 
bitter for us to be parted thus; but I know that you will bear it 
like a heroine. "Won’t you, Polly ?” 

‘ I will try to bear it, dear.” 

She said very little more than this, but clung about her hus¬ 
band, not with any desperate force, not with any clamorous and 
tumultuous grief, but with a half-despondent resignation; as a 
drowning man, whose strength is well nigh exhausted, may 
cling in his hopelessness, to a spar which be knows he must 
presently abandon. 

Mary Arundel followed her husband hither and thither while 
he made his brief and hurried preparations for the sudden jour¬ 
ney, but although she was powerless to assist him—for her 
trembling hands let fall everything she tried to hold, and there 
was a mist before her eyes which distorted and blotted the out¬ 
line of each object she looked at—she hindered him by no noisy 
lamentations, she distressed him by no tears. She suffered, as 
it was her habit to suffer, quietly and uncomplainingly. 

The sun was sinking when she went with Edward down¬ 
stairs to the porch, before which the landlord’s pony and gig 
were in w aiting, in custody of a smart lad who was to drive Mr. 
Arundel to Southampton. There was no time for any protracted 
farewell, it was better so, perhaps, Edward thought. He 
would be back so soon that the grief he felt in this parting—and 
it may be that his suffering w>as scarcely less than Mary’s— 
seemed wasted anguish, to which it would have been sheer cow r 
ardice to give way. But for all this the soldier very nearly 
broke down when he saw bis childish wife’s piteous face, w’hite 


162 


JOHJSt MAROuMOJSrS LEGACY. 

in the evening sunlight, turned to him in mute appeal, as if the 
quivering lips would fain have entreated him to abandon all 
and to remain. He lifted the fragile figure in his arms alas! it 
had never seemed so fragile as now—and covered the pale face 
with passionate kisses and fast-dropping tears. 

“ God bless and defend you, Mary! God keep-” 

He was ashamed of the huskiness of his voice, and putting 
his wife suddenly away from him, he sprung into the gig, 
snatched the reins from the boy’s hand, and drove away at the 
pony’s best speed. The old-fashioned vehicle disappeared in a 
cloud of dust; and Mary, looking after h*er husband with eyes 
that were as yet tearless, saw nothing but glaring light and con¬ 
fusion, and a pastoral landscape that reeled and heaved like a 
stormy sea. 

It seemed to her, as she went slowly back to her room, and 
sat down amidst the disorder of open portmanteaus and over¬ 
turned hat-boxes, which the young man bad thrown here and 
there in his hurried selection of the few things necessary for 
him to take on his hasty journey—it seemed as if the greatest 
calamity of her life had now befallen her. As hopelessly as she 
had thought of her father’s death, she now thought of Edward 
Arundel’s departure. She could not see beyond the acute an¬ 
guish of this separation. She could not realize to herself that 
there was no cause for all this terrible sorrow; that the parting 
was only a temporary one; and that her husband would return 
to her in a few days at the furthest. Now that she was alone, 
that the necessity for heroism was past, she abandoned herself 
utterly to the despair that had held possession of her soul from 
the moment in which Captain Arundel had told her of his fa¬ 
ther’s illness. * • 

The sun went down behind the purple hills that sheltered the 
western side of the little village. The tree-tops in the orchard 
below the open window of Mrs. Arundel’s bedroom grew dim in 
the gray twilight. Little by little the sound of voices in the 
rooms below died away into stillness. The fresh, rosy-cheeked 
country girl who had waited upon the young husband and wife 
came into the sitting-room with a pair of wax candles in old- 
fashioned silver candlesticks, and lingered in the room for a 
little time, expecting to receive some order from the lonely 
watcher. But Mary had locked the door of her bed-chamber, 
and sat with her head upon the sill of the open window, looking 
wearily out into the dim orchard. It was ouly when the stars 
glimmered in the tranquil sky that the girl’s blank despair gave 
way before a sudden burst of tears, and she flung herself down 
beside the white-curtained bed to pray for her young husband. 
She prayed for him in an ecstatic fervor of love and faith, car¬ 
ried away by the new hopefulness that arose out of her ardent 
supplications, and picturing him going triumphant on his course 
to find his father out of danger—restored to health, perhaps— 
and to return to her before the stars glimmered through the 
darkness of another summer’s night. She prayed for him, 
hoping and believing everything; though at the hour in which 
she knelt, with the faint starlight shimmering upon her upturned 


John marciimonts legacy. m 

face and clasped hands, Edward Arundel was lying, maimed 
and senseless, in the wretched waiting-room of a iittle rail way- 
station in Dorsetshire, watched over by an obscure country sur¬ 
geon, while the frightened officials scudded here and there in 
search of some vehicle in which the young man might be con¬ 
veyed to the nearest town. 

There had been one of those accidents which seem terribly 
common on every line of railway, however well managed. A 
signal-man had mistaken one train for another; a flag had been 
dropped too soon; and the down express had run into a heavy 
luggage-train blundering up from Exeter with farm produce for 
the London markets. Two men had been killed, and a great 
many passengers hurt; some very seriously. Edward Arundel’s 
case was perhaps one of the most serious among these. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

SOUNDING THE DEPTHS. 

Lavinia Weston spent the evening after her visit to March- 
mont Towers at her writing-desk, which, like everything else 
appertaining to her, was a model of neatness and propriety; 
perfect in its way, although it was no marvelous specimen of 
walnut-wood and burnished gold, no elegant structure of papier- 
mache and mother-of-pearl, but simply a school-girl’s rosewood 
velvet-lined desk, bought for fifteen shillings or a guinea. 

Mrs. Weston had administered the evening refreshment of 
weak tea, stale bread, and strong butter to her meek husband, 
and had dismissed him to the surgery, a sunken and rather cellar¬ 
like apartment opening out of the prim second-best parlor, and 
approached from the village street by a side-door. The surgeon 
was very well content to employ himself with the preparation 
of such draughts and boluses as were required by the ailing in¬ 
habitants of Kemberling, while his wife sat at her desk in the 
room above him. He left his gallipots and pestle and mortar 
once or twice in the course of the evening to clamber ponder¬ 
ously up the three or four stairs leading to the sitting-room, 
and stare through the keyhole of the door at Mrs. Weston’s 
thoughtful face, and busy hand glide softly over the smooth 
note-paper. He did this in no prying or suspicious spirit, but 
out of sheer admiration for his wife. 

“ What a mind she has!” he murmured, rapturously, as he 
went back to his work; “ what a mind!” 

The letter which Lavinia Weston wrote that evening was a 
very long one. She was one of those women who write long 
letters upon every convenient occasion. To night she covered 
two sheets of note-paper with her small neat handwriting. 
Those two sheets contained a detailed account of the interview 
that had taken place that day between the surgeon's wife and 
Olivia; and the letter was addressed to the artist, Paul March- 
mont. 

Perhaps it was in consequence of the receipt of this letter that 
Paul Marchmont arrived at his sister’s house in Kemberling two 
days after Mrs. Weston’s visit to Marchmont Towers. He told. 



164 


JOHN MARCHMONT ’S LEGACY . 

the surgeon that be came to Lincolnshire for a few days’change 
of air,“after a long spell of very hard work; and George 
Weston, who looked upon his brother-in-la w as an intellectual 
demi-god, was very well content to accept any explanation of 
Mr. Marchmont’s visit. 

‘ 1 Kemberling isn’t a very lively place for you, Mr. Paul, he 
said, apologetically—he always called his wife’s brother Mr. 
Paul—“ but I dare say Lavinia will contrive to make you com¬ 
fortable. She persuaded me to come here when old Dawnfield 
died; but I can’t say she acted with her usual tact, for the busi¬ 
ness ain’t as good as my Stanfield practice; but I don’t tell 
Lavinia so.” 

Paul Marchmont smiled. 

“ The business will pick up by and by, I dare say.” he said. 
“ You’ll have the Marchmont Towers’ family to attend to in 
good time, I suppose.” 

“ That’s what Lavinia said,” answered the surgeon. “ ‘ Mrs. 
John Marchmont can’t refuse to employ a relation,’ she says; 
‘and as first cousin to Mary Marchrnont’s father, I ought- 
meaning herself, you know—‘to have some influence in that 
quarter.’ But then, you see, the very week we come here the 
gal goes and runs away; which rather, as one may .say, puts a 
spoke in our wheel, you know.” 

Mr. George Weston rubbed his chin reflectively as he con 
eluded thus. He was a man given to spending his leisure hours 
—when he had any leisure, which was not very often—in tavern 
parlors, where the affairs of the nation were settled or unsettled 
every evening over sixpenny glasses of Hollands and water; 
and he regretted his removal from Stanfield, which had been 
as the uprooting of all his dearest associations. He was a 
solemn man, who never hazarded an opinion lightly—perhaps 
because he never had an opinion to hazard—and his stolidity 
won him a good deal of respect from strangers; but in the hands 
of his wife he was meeker than the doves that cooed in the 
pigeon house behind his dwelling, and more plastic than the 
knob of white wax upon which industrious Mrs. Weston was 
wont to rub. her thread when engaged in the mysteries of that 
elaborate and terrible science which women paradoxically call 
plain needle-work. 

Paul Marchmont presented himself at the Towers upon the 
day after his arrival at Kemberling. His interview with the 
widow was a very long one. He had studied every line of his 
sister’s letter; he had weighed every word that had fallen from 
Olivia’s lips and had been recorded by Lavinia Weston; and tak 
ing the knowledge thus obtained as his starting-point, he took 
his dissecting-knife and went to work at an intellectual autopsy. 
He anatomized the wretched woman’s soul. He made her tell 
her secret, and bare her tortured breast before him; now wring¬ 
ing some hasty word from her impatience, now entrapping her 
into some admission—if only as much as a defiant look, a sud¬ 
den lowering of the dark brows, an involuntary compression of 
the lip®. He made her reveal herself to him. Poor Rosencrantz 
and Guildensterq were sorry blunderers in that art which is vul- 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


165 


garly called pumping, and were easily put out by a few quips 
and quaint retorts from the mad Danish prince; but Paul March- 
mont would have played upon Hamlet more deftly than ever 
mortal musician played upon pipe or recorder, and would have 
fathomed the remotest depths of that sorrowful and erratic soul. 
Olivia writhed under the torture of that polite inquisition, for 
she knew that her secrets were being extorted from her; that 
her pitiful folly—that folly which she would have denied even 
to herself, if possible—was being laid bare in all its weak fool¬ 
ishness. She knew this; but she was compelled to smile in the 
face of her bland inquisitor, to respond to his commonplace ex¬ 
pressions of concern about the protracted absence of the missing 
girl, and meekly to receive his suggestions respecting the course 
it was her duty to take. Be had the air of responding to her 
suggestions, rather than of himself dictating any particular line 
of conduct. He affected to believe that he was only agreeing 
with some understood ideas of hers, while he urged his own views 
upon her. 

“Then we are quite of one mind in this, my dear Mrs. Mareh- 
mont,” he said, at last; “this unfortunate girl must not be suf¬ 
fered to remain away from her legitimate home any longer than 
we can help. It is our duty to find and bring her back. I need 
scarcely say that you, being bound to her by every tie of affec¬ 
tion, and having, beyond this, the strongest claim upon her 
gratitude for your devoted fulfillment of the trust confided in 
you—one hears of these things, Mrs. Marchmont, in a country 
village like Kemberling—I need scarcely say that you are the 
most fitting person to win the poor child back to a sense of her 
duty—jf she can be won to such a sense.” Paul Marchmont 
added, after a sudden pause and a thoughtful sigh, “ I some- 
til3108 fcO/I* ^ 

He stopped abruptly, waiting until Olivia should question 
him. 

“ You sometimes fear-” 

“ That—that the error into which Miss Marchmont has fallen 
is the result of a mental rather than of a moral deficiency.” 

“ What do you mean ?” 

“ I mean this, my dear Mrs. Marchmont,” answered the artist, 
gravely; “one of the most powerful evidences of the soundness 
of a man’s brain is his capability of assigning a reasonable 
motive for every action of his life, no matter how unreasonable 
the action in itself may seem, if the motive for that action can 
be demonstrated. But the moment a man acts without motive, 
we begin to take alarm and to watch him. He is eccentric; his 
conduct is no longer amenable to ordinary rule; and we begin t o 
trace his eccentricities to some weakness or deficiency in his 
judgment or intellect. Now, I ask you, what motive Mary 
Marchmont can have had for running away from this house ?” 

Olivia quailed under the piercing scrutiny of the artist’s 
cold, gray eyes, but she did not attempt to reply to his ques- 

ll °‘^The answer is very simple,” he continued, after that long 
scrutiny; “ the girl could have had no cause for flight, while, on 


166 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 

the other hand, every reasonable motive that can be supposed to 
actuate a woman’s conduct was arrayed against her. She had 
a happy home, a kind step-mother. She was within a few years 
of becoming undisputed mistress of a very large estate. And 
yet, immediately after having assisted at a festive entertain¬ 
ment, to all appearance as gay and happy as the gayest and 
happiest there, this girl runs away in the dead of the night, 
abandoning the mansion which is her own property, and assign¬ 
ing no reason whatever for what she does. Can you wonder, 
then, if I feel confirmed in an opinion that I formed upon the 
day on which I heard the reading of my cousin’s will?” 

“ What opinion ?” 

“ That Mary Marchmont is as feeble in mind as she is fragile 
in body.” 

He launched this sentence boldly, and waited for Olivia’s 
reply. He had discovered the widow’s secret. He had fathomed 
the cause of her jealous hatred of Mary Marchmont; but even 
he did not yet understand the nature of the conflict in the des¬ 
perate woman’s breast. She could not be wicked all at once. 
Against every fresh sin she made a fresh struggle; and she 
would not accept the lie which the artist tried to force upon her. 

“ I do not think that there is any deficiency in my step¬ 
daughter’s intellect,” she said, resolutely. 

She was beginning to understand that Paul Marchmont wanted 
to ally himself with her against the orphan heiress, but as yet 
she did not understand why he should do so. She was slow to 
comprehend feelings that were utterly foreign to her own nat¬ 
ure. There was so little of mercenary baseness in this strange 
woman’s soul, that had the flame of a candle alone stood be¬ 
tween her and the possession of Marchmont Towers, I doubt if 
she would have cared to waste a breath upon its extinction. 
She had lived away from the world, and out of the world; and 
it was difficult for her to comprehend the mean and paltry 
wickednesses which arise out of the worship of Baal. 

Paul Marchmont recoiled a little before the straight answer 
which the widow had given him. 

“ You think Miss Marchmont strong minded, then, perhaps?” 
he said. 

“ No, not strong-minded.” 

“ My dear Mrs. Marchmont, you deal in paradoxes,” exclaimed 
the artist. “ You say that your step daughter is neither weak- 
minded nor strong-minded?” 

“Weak enough, perhaps, to be easily influenced by other 
people; weak enough to believe anything my cousin Edward 
Arundel might choose to tell her; but not what is generally 
called deficient in intellect.” 

“ You think her perfectly able to take care of herself?” 

“ Yes; I think so.” 

“ And yet this running away looks almost as if—but I have 
no wish to force any unpleasant belief upon you, my dear 
madam. I think—as you yourself appear to suggest—that the 
best thing we can do is to get this poor girl home again as 
quickly as possible. It will never do for the mistress of March- 


JOHN MAR C Id MON T ’S LEGACY, 


167 


mont Towers to be wandering about the world with Mr. Edward 
Arundel. Pray pardon me, Mrs. Marchmont, if I speak rather 
disrespectfully of your cousin; but I really cannot think that 
the gentleman has acted very honorably in this business.’' 

Olivia was silent. She remembered the passionate indignation 
of the young soldier, the angry defiance hurled at her, as Ed¬ 
ward Arundel galloped away from the gaunt western facade. 
She remembered these things, and involuntarily contrasted them 
with the smooth blandness of Paul Marchmont’s talk, and the 
deadly purpose lurking beneath it—of which deadly purpose 
some faint suspicion was beginning to dawn upon her. 

If she could have thought Mary Marchmont mad—if she could 
have thought Edward Arundel base—she would have been glad; 
for then there would have been some excuse for her own wick¬ 
edness. But she could not think so. She slipped little by little 
down into the black gulf, dragged now by her own mad pas¬ 
sion, now lured yet further downward by Paul Marchmont. 

Between this man and eleven thousand a year the life of a 
fragile girl was the solitary obstacle. For three years it had 
been so, and for three years Paul Marchmont had waited—pa¬ 
tiently, as it was his habit to wait—the hour and the oppor¬ 
tunity for action. The hour and opportunity had come, and this 
woman, Olivia Marchmont, only stood in his way ; She must 
become either his enemy or his tool, to be baffled or to be made 
useful. He had now sounded the depths of her nature, and he 
determined to make her his tool. 

“ It shall be my business to discover this poor child’s hiding- 
place,” he said; “when that is found, I will communicate with 
you, and I know you will not refuse to fulfill the trust confided 
to you by your late husband. You will bring your step-daugh¬ 
ter back to this house, and henceforward protect her from the 
dangerous influence of Edward Arundel.” 

Olivia looked at the- speaker with an expression which seemed 
like terror. It was* as if she said: 

“ Are you the devil that you hold out this temptation to me, 
and twist my own passions to serve your purpose?” 

And then "she paltered with her conscience. 

“ Do you consider that it is my duty to do this ?” she asked. 

“ My dear Mrs. Marchmont, most decidedly.” 

“ I will do it, then. I— I— wish to do my duty.” 

“ And you can perform no greater act of charity than by 
bringing this unhappy girl back to a sense of her duty. Remem¬ 
ber that her reputa tion, her future happiness may fall a sacrifice 
to this foolish conduct, which, I regret to say, is very generally 
known in the neighborhood. Forgive me if I express my opin¬ 
ion too freely; but I cannot help thinking that if Mr. Arundel’s 
intentions had been strictly honorable, he would have written 
to you before this, to tell you that his search for the missing girl 
had failed; or, in the event of His finding her, he would have 
taken the earliest opportunity of bringing her back to her own 
home. My poor cousin’s somewhat unprotected position, her 
wealth, and her inexperience of the world, place her at the mercy 
of a fortune-hunter; and Mr, Arm del has himself to thank if 


108 


JOHN .MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


his conduct gives rise to the belief that he wishes to compromise 
this girl in the eyes of the scandalous, and -thus make sure of 
your consent to a marriage which would give him command of 
my cousin’s fortune.” 

Olivia Marchmont’s bosom heaved with the stormy beating 
of her heart. Was she to sit calmly by and hold her peace while 
this man slandered the brave young soldier, the bold, reckless, 
generous-hearted lad, who had shone upon her out of the dark¬ 
ness of her life, as the very incarnation of all that is noble and 
admirable in mankind ? Was she to sit quietly by and hear a 
6tranger lie away her kinsman’s honor, and truth, and man¬ 
hood ? 

Yes, she must do so. This man had offered her a price for her 
truth and her soul. He was ready to help her to the revenge 
she longed for. He was ready to give her his aid in separating 
the innocent young lovers, whose pure affection had poisoned 
her life, whose happiness was worse than the worst death to her. 
She kept silent, therefore, and waited for Paul to speak again. 

“ I will go up to town to-morrow, and set to work about this 
business,’' the artist said, as he rose to take leave of Mrs. March¬ 
mont; “ Ido not believe that I shall have much difficulty in find¬ 
ing the young lady’s hiding-place. My first task shall be to look 
for Mr. Arundel. You can perhaps give me the address of some 
place in London where vour cousin is in the habit of staying ?” 

“ I can.” 

“ Thank you; that will very much simplify matters. I shall 
write you immediate word of any discovery I make, and will 
then leave all the rest to you. My influence over Mary March- 
mont as an entire stranger could be nothing. Yours, on the 
contrary, must be unbounded. It will be for you to act upon 
my letter.” 

******* 

Olivia Marchmont waited for two days and nights for the 
prondsed letter. Upon the third morning it came. The artist’s 
epistle was very brief: 

“My dear, Mrs. Marchmont, —I have made the necessary 
discovery. Miss Marchmont is to be found at the White Hart 
Inn, Milldale, near Winchester. May I venture to urge your 
proceeding there in search of her without delay? 

“ Yours, very faithfully. 

“ Paul Marchmont. 

“ Charlotte Street, Fitzrot Square, Aug. 15.” 


CHAPTER XX. 

RISEN FROM THE GRAVE. 

The rain dripped ceaselessly upon the dreary earth under a 
gray November sky — a dull and lowering sky, that seemed to 
hrood over this lower world with some menace of coming down 
to blot out and destroy it. The express train rushing headlong 
across the wet flats of Lincolnshire glared like a meteor in the 
gray fog; the dismal shriek of the engine was like the cry of a 
bird of prey. The few passengers who had chosen that dreary 



169 


JOHN MARCH MO NT '$> IeCaCY. 

winter’s clay for their travels looked despondently out at the 
monotonous prospect, seeking in vain to descry some spot of 
hope in the joyless prospect; or made futile attempts to read 
their newspapers by the dim light of the lamp in the roof of the 
carriages. Sulky passengers shuddered savagely as they 
wrapped themsel es in huge woolen rugs or ponderous cover¬ 
ings made from the skins of wild beasts. Melancholy passen¬ 
gers drew grotesque and hideous traveling-caps over their 
brows, and coiling themselves in the corner of their seats, es¬ 
sayed to sleep away the weary hours. Everything upon this 
earth seemed dismal and damp, cold and desolate, incongruous 
and uncomfortable. 

But there was one first-class passenger in that Lincolnshire 
express who made himself especially obnoxious to his fellows 
by the display of an amount of restlessness and superabundant 
energy quite out of keeping with the lazy despondency of those 
about him. 

This was a young man with a long tawny beard and a white 
face—a very handsome face, though wan and attenuated, as if 
with some terrible sickness, and somewhat disfigured by cer¬ 
tain strappings of plaster, which were bound about a patch of 
his skull a little above the left temple. This young man had the 
side of one carriage to himself, and a sort of bed had been made 
up for him with extra cushions, upon which he lay at full 
length, when he was still, which was never for very long to¬ 
gether. He was enveloped almost to the chin in voluminous 
railway rugs, but, in spite of these coverings, shuddered every 
now and then as if with cold. He had a pocket-pistol among 
his traveling paraphernalia, which he applied occasionally to 
his dry lips. Sometimes drops of perspiration broke suddenly 
out upon his forehead, and were brushed away by a tremulous 
hand, that was scarcely strong enough to hold a cambric hand¬ 
kerchief. In short, it was sufficiently obvious to every one that 
this young man with the tawny beard had only lately risen from 
a sick-bed, and had risen therefrom considerably before the 
time at which any prudent medical practitioner would have' 
given him license to do 'so. 

It was evident that he was very, very ill, but that he was, if 
anything, more ill at ease in mind than in body, and that some 
terrible gnawing anxiety, some restless care, some horrible un¬ 
certainty or perpetual foreboding of trouble, would not allow 
him to be at peace. It was as much as the three fellow-pas¬ 
sengers who sat opposite to him could do to bear with his im¬ 
patience, his restlessness, his short half stifled moans, his long 
weary sighs: the horror of his fidgety feet shuffled incessantly 
upon the cushions; the suddenly convulsive jerks with which 
he would lift himself upon his elbow to stare fiercely into the 
dismal fog outside the carriage window; the groans that were 
wrung from him as he flung himself into new and painful posi¬ 
tions; the frightful aspect of physical agony which came over 
his face as he looked at his watch—and he dr^v out and con¬ 
sulted that ill-used chronometer, upon an average, once in a 
quarter of an hour; his impatient crumpling of the crisp leaves 



170 


JOHN 31 A RCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

of a new “ Bradshaw,” which he turned over ever and anon, as 
if, by perpetual reference to that mysterious time-table, he 
might hasten the advent of the hour at which he was to reach 
his destination. He was altogether, a most aggravating and ex¬ 
asperating traveling companion; and it was only out of Chris¬ 
tian forbearance with the weakness of his physical state that his 
irritated fellow-passengers refrained from uniting themselves 
against him, and casting him bodily out of the window of the 
carriage, as a clown sometimes flings a venerable but tiresome 
pantaloon through a square trap or pitfall, lurking, undreamed 
of. in the facade of an honest tradesman’s dwelling. 

The three passengers had, in divers manners, expressed their 
sympathy with the invalid traveler; but their courtesies had 
not been responded to with any evidence of gratitude or hearti¬ 
ness. The young man had answered them in an absent fashion, 
scarcely deigning to took at them as he spoke, speaking alto¬ 
gether with the air of some sleep-walker, who roams hither and 
thither absorbed in a dreadful dream, making a world for him¬ 
self, and peopling it with horrible images unknown to those 
about him. 

Had he been ill? Yes, very ill. He had had a railway acci¬ 
dent, ancl then brain-fever. He had been ill for a long time. 

Somebody asked him how long ? 

He shuffled about upon the cushions, and groaned aloud at this 
question, to the alarm of the man who had asked it. 

“ How long?” he cried, in a fierce agony of mental or bodily 
uneasiness; “ how long? Two months—three months—ever since 
the 14th of August.” 

Then another passenger, looking at the young man’s very evi¬ 
dent sufferings from a commercial point of view, asked him 
whether he had had any compensation. 

“ Compensation!” cried the invalid. ‘‘What compensation?” 

“Compensation from the railway company. I hope you’ve a 
strong case against them, for you’ve evidently been a terrible 
sufferer.” 

It was dreadful to see the way in which the sick man writhed 
under this question. 

“Compensation!" he cried. “What compensation can they 
give me for an accident that shut me in a living grave for three 

months, that separated me from-You don’t know what 

you’re talking about, sir,” he added, suddenly; “ I can’t think of 
this business patiently; I can’t be reasonable. If they’d hacked 
me to pieces, I shouldn’t have cared. I’ve been under a red-hot 
Indian sun when we fellows couldn’t see the sky above us for 
the smoke of the cannons and the flashing of the sabers about 
our heads, and I’m not afraid of a little cutting and smashing 
more or less; but wfflen I think of what others may have suf¬ 
fered through-I’m almost mad, and-” 

He couldn't say any more, for the intensity of his passion 
had shaken him as a leaf is shaken by a whirlwind; and he 
fell back upon the cushions, trembling in every limb, and 
groaning aloud. His fellow-passengers looked at each other 
rather nervously, and two out of the three entertained seri 


JOTtN MA ROmTONT'S LEGACY. 


m 


ou.) thoughts of changing carriages when the express stopped 
midway between London and Lincoln. 

But they were reassured by and by; for the invalid, who 
was Captain Edward Arundel, or that pale shadow of the 
dashing young cavalry officer who had risen from a sick-bed, 
relapsed into silence, and displayed no more alarming symp¬ 
toms than that perpetual restlessness and disquietude which 
is cruelly wearying even to the strongest nerves. He only 
spoke once more, and that was when the short day, in which 
there had been no actual daylight, was closing in, and the 
journey nearly finished, when "he startled his companions by 
crying out suddenly: 

“ O my God, will this journey never come to an end? Shall 
I never be put out of this horrible suspense ?” 

The journey, or at any rate Captain Arundel’s share of it, 
came to an end almost immediately afterward, for the train 
stopped at Swampington; and while the invalid was stagger¬ 
ing feebly to his feet, eagei 1 to scramble out of the carriage, 
his servant came to the door to assist and support him. 

“You seem to have borne the journey wonderful, sir,” the 
man said, respectfully, as he tried to rearrange his master’s 
wrappings, and to do as much as circumstances, and the 
young man’s restless impatience, would allow of being done for 
his comfort. 

“ I have suffered the tortures of the infernal regions. Mor¬ 
rison,” Captain Arundel ejaculated, in answer to his attendant’s 
congratulatory address. “Get me a fly directly. I must go to 
the Towers at once.” 

“Not to-night, sir, surely ?” the servant remonstrated, in a 
tone of alarm. “ Your mar and the doctors said you must rest 
at Swampington to-night.” 

“ I’ll rest nowhere till I’ve been to Marchmont Towers,” an¬ 
swered the young soldier, passionately. “If I must walk there 
—if I’m to drop down dead on the road—I’ll go. If the corn¬ 
fields between this and the Towers were a blazing prairie or a 
raging sea, I’d go. Get me a fly, man; and don t talk to me of 
my mother or the doctors. I’m going to look for my wife. Get 
me a fly.” 

This demand for a commonplace hackney vehicle sounded 
rather like an anti climax, after the young man’s talk of blazing 
prairies and raging seas; but passionate reality has no ridicu¬ 
lous side, and Edward Arundel’s most foolish words were sub¬ 
lime by reason of their earnestness. 

“ Get me a fly, Morrison.” he said, grinding his heel upon the 
platform in the intensity of his impatience, “ Or, stay, we 
should gain more in the end if you were to go to the George— 
it’s not ten minutes’ walk from here; one of the porters will 
take you—the people there know me, and they’ll let you have 
some vehicle, with a pair of horses, and a clever driver. Tell 
them it’s for an errand of life and death, and that Captain 
Arundel will pay them three times their usual, price, or six 
times, if they wish. Tell them anything, so long as you get 
what we want.” 


m JOHN MA RC IT MO NT '8 LEGACY. 

The valet, an old servant of Edward Arundel’s father, was 
carried away bv the young man’s mad impetuosity. The 
vitality of this broken-down invalid, whose physical weakness 
contrasted strangely with his mental energy, bore down upon 
the grave man-servant like an avalanche, and carried him whither 
it would. He was fain to abandon all hope of being true to the 
promises which he had given to Mrs. Arundel and the medical 
men, and to vield himself to the will of the fiery young soldier. 

He left Edward Arundel sitting upon a chair in the solitary 
waiting-room, and hurried after the porter who had volunteered 
to show him the way to the George Inn, the most prosperous 
hotel in Swampington. 

The valet had good reason to be astonished by his young 
master’s energy and determination; for Mary Marchmont‘s hus¬ 
band was as one rescued from the very jaws of death. For 
twelve weeks after that terrible concussion upon the South¬ 
western Railway, Edward Arundel had lain in a state of coma 
—helpless, mindless; all the story of his life blotted away, and 
his brain transformed into as blank a page as if he bad been an 
infant lying on his mother’s knees. A fractured skull had been 
the young captain’s chief share in those injuries which were 
dealt out pretty freely to the travelers in the Exeter mail on the 
14th of August; and the young man had been conveyed to 
Daugerfield Park, while his* father’s corpse lay in stately solem¬ 
nity in one of the chief rooms, almost as much a corpse as that 
dead father. 

Mrs. Arundel’s troubles had come, as the troubles of rich and 
prosperous people often do come, in a sudden avalanche, that 
threatened to overwhelm the tender-hearted matron. She had 
been summoned from Germany to attend her husband’s death¬ 
bed; and she was called away from her faithful watch beside 
that death-bed, to hear tidings of the terrible accident that had 
befallen her youuger son. 

Neither the Dorsetshire doctor who attended the stricken 
traveler upon his homeward journey, and brought the strong 
man, helpless as a child, to claim the same tender devotion that 
had watched over his infancy, nor the Devonshire doctors who 
were summoned to Dangerfield, gave any hope of their patient’s 
recovery. The sufferer might linger for years, they said; but 
his existence would be only a living death, a horrible blank, 
which it was a cruelty to wish prolonged. But when a great 
London surgeon appearedupon the scene, a new light, a won¬ 
derful gleam of hope, shone in upon the blackness of the 
mother’s despair. 

This great London surgeon, who was a very unassuming and 
matter-of-fact little man, and who seemed in a great burry to 
earn his fee and run back to Saville Row by the next express,^ 
made a brief examination of the patient, asked a very few sharp 
and trenchant questions of the reverential provincial medical 
practitioners, and then declared that the chief cause of Edward 
Arundel’s state lay in the fact that a portion of the skull was 
depressed—a splinter pressed upon the brain. 

The provincial practitioners opened their eyes very wide, and 


JOHN 3lARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 17a 

one of them ventured to mutter something to the effect that he 
had thought as much for a long time. The London surgeon 
further stated, that until the pressure was removed from the 
patient’s brain, Captain Edward Arundel would remain in pre¬ 
cisely the same state as that into which he had fallen immedi¬ 
ately upon the accident. The splinter could only be removed 
by a very critical operation, and this operation must be de¬ 
ferred until the patient’s bodily strength was in some measure 
restored. 

The surgeon gave brief but decisive directions to the pro¬ 
vincial medical men as to the treatment of their patient dur¬ 
ing this interregnum, and then departed, after promising to 
return as soon as Captain Arundel was in a fit state for the 
operation. This period did not arrive till the first week in 
November, when the Devonshire doctors ventured to declare 
their patient’s shattered frame in a great measure renovated by 
their devoted attention, and the tender care of the best of 
mothers. 

The great surgeon came. The critical operation was per¬ 
formed, with such eminent success as to merit a very long de¬ 
scription which afterward appeared in the Lancet; and slowly, 
like the gradual lifting of a curtain, the black shadows passed 
away from Edward Arundel’s mind, and the memory of the 
past returned to him. 

It was then that he raved madly about his young wife, per¬ 
petually demanding that she might be summoned to him; con¬ 
tinually declaring that some great misfortune would befall her 
if she were not brought to bis side, that, even in his feebleness, 
he might defend and protect her. His mother mistook his 
vehemence for the raving of delirium. The doctors fell into the 
same error, and treated him for brain fever. It was only when 
the young soldier demonstrated to them that he could, by mak¬ 
ing an effort over himself, be as reasonable as they were, that 
he convinced them of their mistake. Then he begged to be left 
alone with his mother; and. with his feverish hands clasped in 
hers, asked her the meaning of her black dress, and the reason 
why his young wife had not come to him. He learned that 
his" mother’s mourning garments were worn in memory of 
his dead father. He learned also, after much bewilderment and 
passionate questioning, that no tidings of Mary Marchmont had 
ever come to Dangerfield. 

It was then that the young man told his mother the story of 
his marriage; how that marriage had been contracted in haste, 
but wdth no real desire for secrecy; how he had, out of mere 
idleness, put off writing to his friends until that last fatal night; 
and how, at the very moment when the pen was in his hand 
and the paper spread out before him, the different claims of a 
double duty had torn him asunder, and he had been summoned 
from the companionship of his bride to the death-bed of his 
father. 

Mrs. Arundel tried in vain to set her son’s mind at rest upon 
the subject of his wife’s silence. 


174 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


“No, mother,” he cried; “it is useless talking to me. You 
don’t know my poor darling. She has the courage of a heroine 
as well as the simplicity of a child. There has been some foul 
play at the bottom of this; it is treachery that has kept my wife 
from me. She would have come on foot had she been free to 
come. I know whose hand is in this business. Olivia March- 
mont has kept my poor girl a prisoner; Olivia Marchmont has 
set herself between me and my darling!” 

“ But you don't know this, Edward. I’ll write to Mr. Paulette; 
he will be able to tell us what has happened.” 

The young man writhed in a paroxysm of mental agony. 

“Write to Mr. Paulette!” he exclaimed. “ No, mother; there 
shall be no delay, no waiting for return posts. That soit of 
torture would kill me in a few hours. No, mother; I wall go to 
my wife by the first train that will take me on my way to 
Lincolnshire.” 

“ You will gp! You, Edward! in your state!” 

There was a terrible outburst of remonstrance and entreaty on 
the part of the poor mother. Mrs. Arundel went down upon her 
knees before her son, imploring him not to leave Dangerfield till 
his strength was recovered; imploring him to let her telegraph 
a summons to Richard Paulette; to let her go herself to March¬ 
mont Towers in search of Mary; to do anything rather than 
carry out that one mad purpose that he was bent on—the pur¬ 
pose of going himself to look for his wife. 

The mother’s tears and prayers were vain; no adamant was 
ever firmer than the young soldier. 

“ She is my wife, mother,” he said; “ I have sworn to protect 
and cherish her; and I have reason to think she has fallen into 
merciless hands. If I die upon the road, I must go to her. It 
is not a case in which I can do my duty by proxy. Every mo¬ 
ment I delay is a wrong to that poor helpless girl. Be reason¬ 
able, dear mother, I implore you; I should suffer fifty times more 
by the torture of suspense if I stayed here, than I can possibly 
suffer in a railroad journey from here to Lincolnshire.” 

The soldier’s strong will triumphed over every opposition. 
The provincial doctors held up their hands, and protested 
against the madness of their patient, but without avail. All that 
either Mrs. Arundel or the doctors could do was to make such 
preparations and arrangements as would render the weary jour¬ 
ney easier; and it was under the mother’s superintendence that 
the aii-cushions, the brandy-flasks, the hartshorn, sal volatile, 
and railway rugs had been provided for the captain’s comfort. 

It was thus that, after a blank interval of three months, Ed¬ 
ward Arundel, like some creature newly risen from the grave, 
returned to Swampington, upon his way to Marchmont Towers. 

The delay seemed endless to this restless passenger, sitting in 
the empty waiting-room of the quiet Lincolnshire Station, 
though the hostler and the stable-boys at the George were be¬ 
stirring themselves with good-will, urged on by Mr. Morrison’s 
promise of a liberal reward for their trouble, and though the 
man who was to drive the carriage lost no time in arraying 
himself for the journey. Captain Arundel looked at his watch 


JOHN MAllCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


175 


three times while he sat in that dreary Swampingtou waiting- 
room. There was a clock over the mantel-piece, but he would 
not trust to that. 

“ Eight o’clock!” he muttered. “ It will be ten before I get to 
the Towers, if the carriage doesn’t come directly.” 

He got up, and walked from the waiting-room to the plat¬ 
form, and from the platform to the door of the station. He 
was so weak as to be obliged to support himself with his stick; 
and even with that help he tottered and reeled sometimes like a 
drunken man. But, in his eager impatience, he was almost un¬ 
conscious of his own weakness, unconscious of nearly every¬ 
thing except the intolerable slowness of the progress of time. 

“ Will it never come?” he muttered. “ Will it never come?” 

But even this almost unendurable delay was not quite inter¬ 
minable. The carriage and-pair from the George Inn rattled up 
to the door of the station, with Mr. Morrison upon the box, and 
a postilion loosely balanced upon one of the long-legged, long- 
backed, bony, gray horses. Edward Arundel got into the 
vehicle before his valet could alight to assist him. 

“ Marchmont Towers!” he cried to the postilion; “ and a five- 
pound note if you get there in less than an hour!” 

He flung some money to the officials who had gathered about 
the door to witness his departure, and who had eagerly pressed 
forward to render him that assistance which, even in his weak¬ 
ness, he disdained. 

These men looked gravely at each other as the carriage 
dashed off into the fog, blundering and reeling as it went along 
the narrow half-made road, that led from the desert patch of 
waste ground upon which the station was built into the high 
street of Swampington. 

“ Marchmont Towers!’' said one of the men, in a tone that 
seemed to imply that there was something ominous even in the 
name of the Lincolnshire mansion. “What does he want at 
Marchmont Towers, I wonder?” 

“Why, don’t you know who he is, mate ?” responded the 
other man, contemptuously- 

“No.” 

“ He’s parson Arundel’s nevy—the young officer that some 
folks said ran away with the poor young miss oop at the 
Towers.” 

“ My word! is he now ? Why, I shouldn’t ha’ known him.” 

“ No: he’s a’most like the ghost of what he was, poor young 
chap! I’ve heerd as he was in that accident as happened last 
August on the Sou’western.” 

The railway official shrugged his shoulders. 

“ It’s all a queer story,” he said. “ I can’t make out naught 
about it; but I know I shouldn’t care to go up to the Towers 

a f ter 

Marchmont Towers had evidently fallen into rather evil repute 
among these simple Lincolnshire people. 

The carriage in which Edward Arundel rode was a superan¬ 
nuated old chariot, whose uneasy springs rattled and shook the 
sick man to pieces. He groaned aloud every now and theni 


176 


JOHN 31 ARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 


from sheer physical agony; and yet I almost doubt if he knew 
that he suffered, so superior in its intensity was the pain of his 
mind to every bodily torture. Whatever consciousness he had 
of his racked and aching limbs was as nothing in comparison to 
the racking anguish of suspense, the intolerable agony of anx¬ 
iety, which seemed multiplied by every moment. He sat with 
his face turned toward the open window of the carriage, look¬ 
ing out steadily iuto the night. There was nothing before him 
but a blank darkness and thick fog, and a flat country blotted 
out by the falling rain; but he strained his eyes until the pupils 
dilated painfully, in his desire to recognize some landmark in 
the hidden prospect. 

“ When shall I get there?” he cried aloud, in a paroxysm of 
rage and grief. “ My own one, my pretty one, my wife, when 
shall I get to you ?” 

He clinched his thin hands until the nails cut into his flesh. 
He stamped upon the floor of the carriage. He cursed the 
rusty, creaking springs, the slow-footed horses, the pools of 
water through which the wretched animals floundered pastern- 
deep. He cursed the darkness of the night, the stupidity of the 
postilion, the length of the way—everything that kept him 
back from the end which he wanted to reach. 

At last the end came. The carriage drew up before the tall 
iron gates, behind which stretched, dreary and desolate as some 
patch of common-land, that melancholy waste which was called 
a park. 

A light burned dimly in the lower window of the lodge—a 
little spot that twinkled faintly red and luminous through the 
darkness and the rain; but the iron gates w T ere closely shut, as 
if Marchmont Towers had been a prison-house. Edward Arun¬ 
del was in no humor to linger long for the opening of those 
gates. He sprung from the carriage, reckless of the weakness 
of his cramped limbs, before the valet could descend from the 
rickety box-seat, or the postilion could get off his horse, and 
shook the wet and rusty iron bars with his wasted hands. The 
gates rattled, but resisted the concussion. They had evidently 
been locked for the night. The young man seized an iron ring, 
dangling at the end of a chain, which hung beside one of the 
stone pillars, and rung a peal that resounded like an alarm- 
signal through the darkness. A fierce watch dog far away in the 
distance howled dismally at the summons, and the distant shriek 
of a peacock echoed across the flat. 

The door of the lodge was opened about five minutes after the 
bell had rung, and an old man peered out into the night, hold¬ 
ing a candle shaded by his feeble hand, and looking suspiciously 
toward the gate. 

“Who is it?” he said. 

“ It is I—Captain Arundel. Open the gate, please.” 

The man, who was very old, and whose intellect seemed to 
have grown dim and foggy as the night itself, reflected for a few 
moments, and then mumbled. 

“Cap’en Arundel! ay, to be sure, to be sure. Parson Arun¬ 
del’s nevy; ay, ay.” 


JOHN MA RCIIMONT'S LEGACY. ffj 

He went back into the lodge, to the disgust and aggravation 
of the young soldier, who rattled fiercely at the gate once more 
in his impatience. But the old man emerged presently, as 
tranquil as if the black November night had been some sunshiny 
noontide in July, carrying a lantern and a bunch of keys, one of 
which he proceeded in a leisurely manner to apply to the great 
lock of the gate. 

“Let me in,” cried Edward Arundel; “man alive, do you 
think I came down here to stand all night staring through those 
iron bars? Is Marcbmont Towers a prison, that you shut your 
gates as if they were never to be opened until the day of judg¬ 
ment ?” 

The old man responded with a feeble, chirpy laugh, an audible 
grin, senile and conciliatory. 

“We’ve no need to keep t’ gates open arter dark,” he said, 
“ folk don’t coome to the Toowers arter dark.” 

He had succeeded by this time in turning the key in the lock; 
one of the gates rolled slowly back upon its rusty hinges, creak¬ 
ing and groaning as if in hoarse protest against all visitors to 
the Towers; and Edward Arundel entered the dreary domain 
which John Marcbmont had inherited from his kinsman. 

The postilion turned his horses from the high road without the 
gates into the broad drive leading up to the mansion. Far away, 
across the wet flats, the broad western front of that gaunt stone 
dwelling-place frowned upon the travelers, its black grimness 
only relieved by two or three dim red patches, that told of 
lighted windows and human habitation. It was rather difficult 
to associate friendly flesh and blood with Marchmont Towers on 
this dark November night. The nervous traveler would have 
rather expected to find diabolical denizens lurking within those 
black and stony walls; hideous enchantments within that rain- 
bespattered roof; weird and incarnate horrors brooding by 
deserted hearths; and fearful shrieks of souls in perpetual pain 
breaking upon the stillness of the night. 

Edward Arundel had no thought of these things. He knew 
that the place was darksome and gloomy, and that, in very spite 
of himself, he had always been unpleasantly impressed by it; 
but he knew nothing more. He only wanted to reach the house 
without delay, and to ask for the young wife whom he had 
parted with upon a balmy August evening three months before. 
He wanted this passionately, almost madly; and every moment 
made his impatience wilder, his anxiety more intense. It seemed 
as if all the journey from Dangerfield Park to Lincolnshire was 
as nothing compared to the space that lay still between him 
and Marcbmont Towers. 

“ We’ve done it in double-quick time, sir,” the postilion said, 
complacently pointing to the steaming sides of the horses. 
“ Master’ll gie it me for driving the beasts like this.” 

Edward Arundel looked at the panting animals. They had 
brought him quickly, then, though the way had seemed so long. 

“ You shall have a five-pound note, my lad,” he said, “ if you 
get me up to yonder house in five minutes.” 

He had his hand upon the door of the carriage, and was lean- 


178 


JOHN MAIlCBMOlSiT'S LEGACY . 


ing against it for support, while he tried to recover enough 
strength with which to clamber into the vehicle, when his eye 
was caught by some white object flapping in the rain against 
the stone pillar of the gate, and made dimly visible in a flicker¬ 
ing patch of light from the lodge-keeper’s lantern. 

“ "What’s that?” he cried, pointing to this white spot Upon the 
moss-grown stone. 

The old man slowly raised his eyes to the spot toward which 
the soldier’s finger pointed. 

“ That?” he mumbled. “Ay, to be sure, to be sure. Poor 
young lady! That’s the printed bill as they stook oop. It’s the 
printed bill to be sure, to be sure. I’d a’most forgot it. It ain’t 
been much good, anyhow; and I’d a’most forgot it.” 

“ The printed bill! the young lady!” gasped Edward Arundel, 
in a hoarse, choking voice. 

He Snatched the lantern from the lodge-keeper’s hand with a 
force that sent the old man reeling and tottering several paces 
backward; and, rushing to the stone pillar, held the light up 
above his head, on a level with the white placard which had 
attracted his notice. It was damp and dilapidated at the edges; 
but that which was printed upon it was as visible to the soldier 
as though each commonplace character had been a fiery sign 
inscribed upon a blazing scroll. 

This was the announcement which Edward Arundel read upon 
the gate-post of Marchmont Towers; 

“ One Hundred Pounds Reward.— Whereas Miss Mary 
Marchmont left her home on Wednesday last, October 17th, 
and has not since been heard of, this is to give notice that the 
above reward will be given to any one who shall afford such in¬ 
formation as will lead to her recovery if she be alive, or to the 
discovery of her body if she be dead. The missing young lady 
is eighteen years of age, rather below the middle height, of fair 
complexion, light-brown hair, and hazel eyes. When she left 
home she had on a gray silk dress, gray shawl, and straw bon¬ 
net. She was last seen near the river-side upon the afternoon of 
Wednesday, the 17th instant. 

“ Marchmont Towers, Oct. 20, 1848.” 


CHAPTER XXI. 

FACE TO FACE. 

It is not easy to imagine a lion-hearted young cavalry-officer, 
whose soldiership in the Punjaub had won the praises of a 
Napier and an Outram, fainting away like a heroine of romance 
at the coming of evil tidings; Edward Arundel, who had risen 
from a sick-bed to a long and fatiguing journey in utter defiance 
of the doctors, was not strong enough to bear the dreadful wel¬ 
come that greeted him on the gate-post at Marchmont Towers. 

He staggered and would have fallen, had not the extended 
arms of his father’s confidential servant been luckily opened to 
receive and support him. But he did not lose his senses. 

“ Get me into the carriage, Morrison,” he cried. “ Get me up 
to that house. They’ve tortured and tormented my wife while 



JOHN MARCIIMONT'S LEGACY. 179 

I've been lying like a log on my bed at Dangerfield. For God’s 
sake, get me up there as quick as you can.” 

Mr. Morrison had read the placard on the gate across his 
young master’s shoulder. He lifted the captain into the car¬ 
riage, shouted to the postilion to drive on, and took his seat by 
the young man’s side. 

“Begging your pardon, Mr. Edward,” he said, gently; “but 
the young lady may be found by this time. That bill’s been 
sticking there for upward of a month, you see, sir, and it isn't 
likely but what Miss Marchmont has been found between that 
time and this.” 

The invalid passed his hand across his forehead, down which 
the cold sweat rolled in great beads. , 

“ Give me some brandy,” lie whispered; “ pour some brandy 
down my throat, Morrison, if you've any compassion upon me; 
I must get strength somehow for the struggle that lies before 
me.” 

The valet took a wicker-covered flask from his pocket and put 
the neck of it to Edward Arundel's lips. 

“ She may be found, Morrison,” muttered the young man, 
after drinking a long draught of the fiery spirit; he would will¬ 
ingly have drunk living fire itself, in his desire to obtain un¬ 
natural strength in this crisis. “ Yes; you’re right there. She 
may be found. But to think that she should have been driven 
away! To think that my poor, helpless, tender girl should have 
been driven a second time from the home that is her own! Yes; 
her own by every law and every right. Oh, the relentless devil, 
the pitiless devil!—what can be the motive of her conduct? Is 
it madness, or the infernal cruelty of a fiend incarnate?” 

Mr. Morrison thought that his young master’s brain had been 
disordered by the shock he had just undergone, and that this 
wild talk was mere delirium. 

“Keep your heart up, Mr. Edward,” he murmured sooth¬ 
ingly; you may rely upon it the young lady has been found.” 

But Edward was in no mind to listen to any mild consolatory 
remarks from his valet. He had thrust his head out of the 
carriage window, and his eyes were fixed upon the dimly-lighted 
casements of the western drawing-room. 

“ The room in which John and Polly and I used to sit together 
when first I came from India,” he murmured. “How happy 
we were! how happy we were!” 

The carriage stopped before the stone portico, a,nd the young 
man got out once more assisted by his servant. His breath came 
short and quick now that he stood upon the threshold. He 
pushed aside the servant who opened the familiar door at the 
summons of the clanging bell, and strode into the hall. A fire 
burned on^ the wide hearth; but the atmosphere of the great 
stone-paved chamber was damp and chilly. 

Captain Arundel walked straight to the door of the western 
drawing-room. It was there that he had seen lights in the win¬ 
dows: it was there that he expected to find Olivia Marchmont. 

He was not mistaken. A shaded lamp burned dimly on a 
table near the fire, There was a Iqw invalid-chair beside this 


180 


JOHN MARCHMONT*S LEGACY. 


table, an open book upon the floor, and an Indian shawl, one he 
had sent*to his cousin, flung carelessly upon the pillows. The 
neglected fire burned low in the old-fashioned grate, and above 
the dull red blaze stood the figure of a woman, tall, dark, and 
gloomy of aspect. 

It was Olivia Marchmont, in the mourning robes that she had 
worn, with but one brief intermission, ever since her husband’s 
death. Her profile was turned toward the door by which Ed¬ 
ward Arundel entered the room; her eyes were bent steadily 
upon the low heap of burning ashes in the grate. Even in that 
doubtful light the young man could see that her features were 
sharpened, and that a settled frown had contracted her straight 
black brows. 

In her fixed attitude, in her air of death-like tranquillity, 
this woman resembled some sinful vestal sister; set, against 
her will, to watch a sacred fire, and brooding moodily over her 
crimes. 

She did not hear the opening of the door; she had not even 
heard the trampling of the horses’ hoofs, or the crashing of the 
wheels upon the gravel before the house. There were times 
when her sense of external things was, as it were, suspended 
and absorbed in the intensity of her obstinate despair. 

“ Olivia!” said the soldier. 

Mrs. Marchmont looked up at the sound of that accusing 
voice, for there was something in Edward Arundel’s simple 
enunciation of her name which seemed like an accusation or a 
menace. She looked up, with a great terror in her face, and 
stared aghast at her unexpected visitor. Her white cheeks, her 
trembling lips, and dilated eyes could not have more palpably 
expressed a great and absorbing horror had the young man 
standing quietly before her been a corpse newly risen from its 
grave. 

“Olivia Marchmont,” said Captain Arundel, after a brief 
pause, “ I have come here to look for my wife.” 

The woman pushed her trembling hands across her forehead, 
brushing the dead black hair from either temple, and still star¬ 
ing with the same unutterable horror at the face of her cousin. 
Several times she tried to speak; but the broken syllables died 
away in her throat in hoarse, inarticulate mutterings. At last, 
with a great effort, the words came. 

“I—I—never expected to see you,” she said; “1 heard that 
you were very ill; I heard that you-” 

“ You heard that I was dying,” interrupted Edward Arundel; 
“ or that if l lived I should drag out the rest of my existence in 
hopeless idiocy. The doctors thought as much a week ago, 
when one of them, cleverer than the rest, I suppose, had the 
courage to perform an operation that restored me to conscious¬ 
ness. Sense and memory came back to me by degrees. The 
thick veil that had shrouded the past was rent asunder, and the 
first image that came to me was the image of my young wife, 
as I had seen her upon the night of our parting. For more than 
three months I had been dead. I was suddenly restored to life. 
| asked those about me to give me tidings of my wife. Had she 


JOHN MA ncmi01\ x 7 'S Ll'lGAOY. 181 

sought me out ? had she followed me to Dangerfield ? No! They 
could tell me nothing. They thought that I was delirious, and 
tried to soothe me with compassionate speeches, merciful false¬ 
hoods, promising me that I should see my darling. But I soon 
read the secret of their seated looks I saw pity and wonder 
mingled in my mother’s face, and I entreated her to be merci¬ 
ful to me, and to tell me the truth. She had compassion upon 
me, and told me all she knew, which was very little. She had 
never heard from my wife. She had never heard of any mar¬ 
riage between Mary Marehmont and me. The only communi¬ 
cation which she had received from any of her Lincolnshire 
relations had been an occasional letter from my Uncle Hubert, 
in reply to one of hers, telling him of my hopeless state.* 

“ This was the shock that fell upon me when life and mem¬ 
ory came back, I could not bear the imprisonment of a sick¬ 
bed. I felt that for the second time I must go out into the 
world to look for my darling; and in defiance of the doctors, in 
defiance of my poor mother, who thought that my departure 
from Dangerfield was a suicide, I am here. It is here that I 
come first to seek for my wife. I might have stopped in Lon¬ 
don to see Richard Paulette. I might sooner have gained 
tidings of my darling. But I came here; I came here without 
stopping by the way, because an uncontrollable instinct and an 
unreasoning impulse tells me that it is here I ought to seek her. 
I am here, her husband, her only true and legitimate defender; 
aud woe be to those who stand between me and my wife!” 

He had spoken rapidly in his passion; and he stopped, ex¬ 
hausted by his own vehemence, and sank heavily into a chair 
near the lamplit table, and only a few paces from the window. 

Then for the first time that night Olivia Marchinont plainly 
saw her cousin’s face, and saw the terrible change that had 
transformed the handsome young soldier sifice the bright 
August morning on which he had gone forth from Marehmont 
Towers. She saw the traces of a long and wearisome illness 
sadly visible in his waxen complexion, his hollow cheeks, the 
faded lustre of his eyes, his dry and pallid lips. She saw all 
this, the woman whose one great; sin had been to love this man 
wickedly and madly, in spite of her better self, in spite of her 
womanly pride; and saw the change in him that had altered 
him from a young Apollo to a shattered and broken invalid. 
And did any revulsion of feeling arise in her breast ? did any 
corresponding transformation in her own heart bear witnesses 
to the baseness of her love ? 

No; a thousand times, no! There was no thrill of disgust, how 
transient soever; not so much as one passing shudder of painful 
surprise, one pang of womanly regret. No! In place of these, 
a passionate yearning arose in this woman’s haughty soul; a 
flood of sudden tenderness rushed across the black darkness of 
her mind. She would have flung herself upon her knees, in 
loving self-abasement at the sick man’s feet. She would have 
cried aloud amidst a tempest of passionate sobs; 

“Oh, my love, my love! you are dearer to me a hundred times 
by this cruel change. It was not your bright blue eyes and 


183 JOHN MARCJIMONT'S LEGACY. 

waving chestnut hair—it was not y.our handsome face, your 
brave, soldier-like bearing—that I loved. My love was not so 
base as that. I inflicted a cruel outrage upon myself when I 
thought that I was the weak fool of a handsome face. What¬ 
ever/have been, my love, at least, has been pure. My love is 
pure, though I am base. I will never slander that again, for I 
know now that it is immortal.” 

In the sudden rush of that flood-tide of Jove and tenderness, 
all these thoughts welled into Olivia Marchmont’s mind. In all 
her sin and desperation, she had never been so true a woman as 
now. She had never, perhaps, been so near being a good 
woman. But the tender emotion was swept out of her breast 
the next moment by the first words of Edward Arundel. 

“ Why do you not answer my question ?” he said. 

She drew herself up in the erect and rigid attitude that had 
become almost habitual to her. Every trace of womanly feeling 
faded out of her face as the sunlight disappears behind the sud¬ 
den darkness of a thunder-cloud. 

“ What question ?” she asked, with icy indifference. 

“The question I have come to Lincolnshire to ask; the ques¬ 
tion I have periled my life, perhaps, to ask,” cried the young 
man. “ Where is my wife ?” 

The widow turned upon him with a horrible smile. 

“ I never heard that you were married,” she said; “ Who is 
your wife?” 

“ Mary Marchmont, the mistress of this house.” 

Olivia opened her eyes and looked at him in half-sardonic 
surprise. 

“ Then it was not a fable?” she said. 

“ What was not a fable ?” 

“The unhappy girl spoke the truth when she said that 
you had married her at some out-ofthe-wav church in Lam¬ 
beth.” 

“The truth! Yes!” cried Edward Arundel. “Who should 
dare to say that she spoke other than the truth? Who should 
dare to disbelieve her ?” 

Olivia Marchmont smiled again—the same horrible smile that 
was almost too horrible for humanity, and yet had a certain 
dark and gloomy grandeur of its own. Satan, the star of the 
morning, may have so smiled despairing defiance upon the 
Archangel Michael. 

“Unfortunately,” she said, “ no one believed the poor child. 
Her story was such a very absurd one, and she could bring for¬ 
ward no shred of evidence in support of it.” 

“ O my God!” ejaculated Edward Arundel, clasping his hands 
above his head in a paroxysm of rage and despair. “ I see it 
all; I see it all. My darling has been tortured to death! Wom¬ 
an!” he cried, “are you possessed of a thousand fiends? Is 
there no one sentiment of womanly comp ;ssion left in your 
breast? If there is one spark of womanhood in your nat¬ 
ure, I appeal to that. I ask you what has happened to my 
wife?” J 

“ My wife! my w'/e!” The reiteration of that familiar phrase 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. M 

was to Oliria Marchmont like the perpetual thrust of a dagger 
aimed at ao open wound. It struck every time upon the same 
tortured spot, and inflicted the same agony. 

“The placard upon the gates of this place can tell you as 
much as I can,” she said. 

The ghastly whiteness of the soldier’s face told her that he 
had seen the placard of which she spoke. 

“She has not been found, then ?” he said hoarsely. 

“No.” 

“ How did she disappear?” 

“ As she disappeared upon the morning on which you followed 
her. She wandered out of the house, this time leaving no let¬ 
ter, nor message, nor explanation of any kind whatever. It 
was in the middle of the day that she went out; and for some 
time her absence caused no alarm, as she had been in the habit 
of going out alone into the grounds whenever she chose. But, 
after some hours, she was waited for and watched for very anx¬ 
iously. Then a search was made.” 

“Where?” 

“ Wherever she had been in the habit of walking—in the 
park; in the wood; along the narrow path by the water; at Pol¬ 
lard’s farm; at Hester’s house at Kemberling—in every place 
where it might be reasonably imagined there was the slightest 
chance of finding her.” 

“ And all this was without result ?” 

“ It was.” 

“ Why did she leave this place? God help you, Olivia Marcli- 
mont, if it was your cruelty that drove her away.” 

The widow took no notice of the threat implied in these 
words. Was there anything upon earth that she feared now ? 
No; nothing. Had she not endured the worst, long ago, in Ed¬ 
ward Arundel’s contempt ? She had no fear of a battle with 
this man; or with any other creature in the world; or with the 
whole world arrayed and banded together against her, if need 
were. Among all the torments of those black depths to which 
her soul had gone down there was no such thing as fear. That 
cowardly baseness is for the happy and prosperous, who have 
something to lose. This woman was by nature dauntless and 
resolute as the hero of some classic story; but in her despair 
she had the desperate and reckless courage of a starving wolf. 
The hand of death was upon her; what could it matter how she 
died ? 

“ I am very grateful to you, Edward Arundel,” she said, bit¬ 
terly, “ for the good opinion you ha^e always had of me. The 
blood of the Dangerfield Arundels must have had some drop of 
poison intermingled with it, I should think, before it could pro¬ 
duce such a vile creature as me; and yet I have heard people 
say my mother was a good woman.” 

The young man writhed impatiently beneath the torture of his 
cousin’s deliberate speech. Was there to be no end to this un¬ 
endurable delay? Even now—now that he was in this house, 
face to face with the woman he had come to question, it seemed 
as if he could not get tidings of his wife. 


184 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

So, often in bis dreams, be had headed a besieging party 
against the Afghans, with the scaling-ladders reared against the 
wall, and his men behind urging him on to the encounter, and 
had felt himself paralyzed and helpless, with his saber weak as 
a withered reed in his nerveless hand. 

“ For God’s sake, let there be no quarreling with phrases be¬ 
tween you and me, Olivia!” he cried. “ If you or any other liv¬ 
ing being have injured my wife, the reckoning between us shall 
be no light one. But there will be time enough to talk of that 
by and by. I stand before you newly risen from a grave in 
which I have lain for more than three months; as dead to the 
world, and to every creature I have ever loved or hated, as if the 
funeral service had been read over my coffin. [ come to de¬ 
mand from you au account of what has happened during that 
interval. If you palter or prevaricate with me, I shall know 
that it is because you fear to tell the truth.” 

“Fear!” 

“Yes; you have good reason to fear, if you have wronged 
Mary Arundel. Why did she leave this house?” 

“ Because she was not happy in it, I suppose. She chose to 
shut herself up in her own room, and to refuse to be governed, 
or advised, or co soled. I tried to do my duty to her; yes,” 
cried Olivia Marchmont, suddenly raising her voice, as if she 
had been vehemently contradicted—“ yes, I did try to do my 
duty to her. I urged her to listen to reason; I begged her to 
abandon her foolish falsehood about a marriage with you in 
London.” 

“ You disbelieved in that marriage?” 

“ I did,” answered Olivia. 

“You lie!” cried Edward Arundel. “You knew that the 
poor child had spoken the truth. You knew her—you knew me 
well enough to know that I should not have detained her away 
from her home an hour, except to make her my wife, except to 
give myself the strongest right to love and defend her.” 

“I knew nothing of the kind, Captain Arundel; you and 
Mary Marchmont had taken good care to keep your secrets from 
me. I knew nothing of your plots, your intentions. I should 
have considered that one of the Dangerfield Arundels would 
have thought his honor sullied by such an act as a stolen mar¬ 
riage with an heiress, considerably under age, and nominally in 
the guardianship of her step-mother. I did, therefore, disbe¬ 
lieve the story Mary Marchmont told me. Another persou, 
much more experienced than me, also disbelieved the unhappy 
girl’s account of her absence-” 

“ Another person? What other person ?” 

“Mr. Marchmont.” 

“ Mr. Marchmont ?” 

“Yes; Paul Marchmont—my husband’s first cousin.” 

A sudden cry of rage and grief broke from Edward Arundel’s 
lips. 

“ O my God!” he exclaimed, “ there was some foundation for 
the warning in John Marchmont’s letter, after all. And I 
laughed at him; I laughed at my poor friend’s fears.” 


JOHN MARCHMONT J S LEGACY. 


185 


The widow looked at her kinsman in mute wonder. 

“Has Paul Marchmont been in this house?’ he asked. 

“Yes.” 

“ When was he here ?” 

“ He has been here often. He comes here constantly. He 
has been living at Kemberling for the last three months.” 

“ Why ?” 

“ For his own pleasure, I suppose,” Olivia answered, haugh¬ 
tily. “ It is no business of mine to pry into Mr. Marchmont’s 
motives.” 

Edward Arundel ground his teeth in an access of ungovern¬ 
able passion. It was not against Olivia but against himself this 
time that he was enraged. He hated himself for the arrogant 
folly, the obstinate presumption, with which he had ridiculed 
and slighted John Marchmont’s vague fears of this kinsman 
Paul. 

“ So this man has been here—is here constantly,” he muttered. 

“ Of course; it is only natural that he should bang about the 
place. And you and he are stanch allies, I suppose?” he asked, 
turning upon Olivia. 

“ Stanch allies! Why ?” 

“ Because you both hate my wife.” 

“ What do you mean ?” 

“You both hate her. You, out of a base envy of her wealth; 
because of her superior rights, which made you a secondary 
person in this house, perhaps—there is nothing else for which 
you could hate her. Paul Marchmont, because she stands 
between him and a fortune. Heaven help her! Heaven help 
my poor, gentle, guileless darling! Surely Heaven must have 
had some pity upon her when her husband was not by.” 

The young man dashed the blinding tears from his eyes. 
They w*ere the first that he had shed since he had risen from 
that which many people had thought his dying bed to search 
for his wife. 

But this was no time for tears or lamentations. Stern deter¬ 
mination took the place of tender pity and sorrowful love. It 
was a time for resolution and promptitude. 

“ Olivia Marchmont, ’he said, “ there has been some foul play 
in this business. My wife has been missing a month; yet, when 
I asked my mother what had happened at this house during my 
illness, she could tell me nothing. Why did you not write to 
tell her of Mary’s flight !” 

“ Because Mrs. Arundel has never done me the honor to cul¬ 
tivate any intimacy between us. My father writes to his sister- 
in-law sometimes. I scarcely ever write to my aunt. On the 
other hand, vour mother had never seen Mary Marchmont, and 
could not be expected to take any great interest in her proceed¬ 
ings. There was, therefore, no reason for my writing a special 
letter to announce the trouble that had befallen me-” 

“ You might have written to my mother about my marriage. 
You might have applied to her for confirmation of the story 
which you disbelieved.” 

Olivia Marchmont smiled. 


186 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY, 


“ Should I have received that confirmation ?” she said. “ No. 

I saw your mother’s letters to my father. There was no mention 
in those letters of any marriage; no mention whatever of Mary 
Marchmont. This in itself was enough to confirm my disbelief. 
Was it reasonable to imagine that you would have married, and 
yet have left your mother in total ignorance of the fact?” 

“ O God, help me!” cried Edward Arundel, wringing his 
hands. “It seems as if my own folly, my own vile procras¬ 
tinations, have brought this trouble upon my wife. Olivia 
Marchmont have pity upon me! If you hate this girl, your mal¬ 
ice must surely have been satisfied by this time. She has suf¬ 
fered enough. Pity me, and help me, if you have any human 
feeling in your breast. She left this house because her life here 
had grown unendurable; because she saw herself doubted, dis¬ 
believed, widowed in the first month of her marriage, utterly 
desolate and friendless. Another woman might have borne up 
against all this misery. Another woman would have known how 
to assert herself, and to defend herself, even in the midst of her 
sorrow and desolation. But my poor darling is a child; a baby 
in ignorance of the world. How should she protect herself 
against her enemies? Her only instinct was to run away from 
her persecutors—to hide herself from those whose pretended 
doubts flung the horror of dishonor upon her. I can understand 
all now; lean understand. Olivia Marchmont, this man Paul 
has a strong reason for being a villain. The motives that have 
induced you to do wrong must be very small in comparison to 
his. He plays an infamous game, I believe, but he plays for a 
high stake.” 

A high stake! Had not she periled her soul upon the casting 
of this die? Had she not flung down her eternal happiness in 
that fatal game of hazard ? 

“ Help me, then, Olivia,” said Edward, imploringly; “ help me 
to find my wife; and atone for all that you have ever done amiss 
in the past. It is not too late.” 

His voice softened as he spoke. He turned to her, with his 
hands clasped, waiting anxiously for her answer. Perhaps this 
appeal was the last cry of her good angel, pleading against the 
devils for her redemption. But the devils had too long held 
possession of the woman’s breast. They rose, arrogant and un- 
pitying, and hardened her heart against that pleading voice. 

“ How much he loves her!” thought Olivia Marchmont; 
“how dearly he loves her; for her sake he humiliates himself 
to me.” 

Then, with no show of relenting in her voice or manner, she 
said, deliberately: 

“ I can only tell you again what I told you before. The pla¬ 
card you saw at the park gates can tell you as much as I can. 
Mary Marchmont ran away. She was sought for in every di¬ 
rection, but without success. Mr. Marchmont, who is a man of 
the world and better able to suggest what is right in such a case 
as this, suggested Mr. Paulette should be sent for. He was ac¬ 
cordingly communicated with. He came and instituted a fresh 
search. He also caused a bill to be printed and distributed 


JOHN MARCHMONT 'S LEGACY 187 

through the country. Advertisements were inserted in the 
Times and other papers. For some reason—I forget what rea¬ 
son—Mary Marchmont’s name did not appear in these advertise¬ 
ments. They were so worded as to render the publication of 
the name unnecessary.” 

Edward Arundel pushed his hand across his forehead. 

“ Richard Paulette has been here!” he murmured, in a low 
voice. 

He had every confidence in the lawyer; and a deadly chill 
came over him at the thought that the cool, hard-headed solic¬ 
itor had failed to find the missing girl. 

“ Yes: he was here two or three days.” 

“And he could do nothing ?” 

“ Nothing, except w hat I have told you.” 

The young man thrust his hand into his breast to still the 
cruel beating of his heart. A sudden terror had taken posses¬ 
sion of him—a horrible dread that he should never look upon 
his young wife’s face again. For some minutes there was a 
dead silence in the room, only broken once or twice by the 
falling of some ashes on the hearth. Captain Arundel sat 
with his face hidden behind his hand. Olivia still stood as she 
had stood when her cousin entered the room, erect and gloomy, 
by the old-fashioned chimney-piece. 

“ There was something in that placard,” the soldier said at 
last, in a hoarse, altered voice—“ there was something about 
ray wife having been seen last by the water-side. Who saw her 
there ?” 

“Mr. Weston, a surgeon of Kemberling—Paul Marchmont’s 
brother-in-law.” 

“ Was she seen by no one else ?” 

“Yes: she was seen at about the same time—a little sooner 
or later, we don’t know which—by one of Farmer Pollard’s 
men.” 

“ And she has never been seen since ?” 

“ Never; that is to say, we can hear of no one who has seen 
her.” 

“ At what time in the day was she seen by this Mr. Weston ?” 

“ At dusk, between five and six o’clock.” 

Edward Arundel put his hand suddenly to his throat, as if 
to check some choking sensation that prevented his speaking. 

“ Olivia,” be said, “ my wife was last seen by the river-side. 
Does any one think that, by any unhappy accident, by any ter¬ 
rible fatality, she lost her way after dark, and fell into the 
water? or that—O God, that would be too horrible!—does any 
one suspect that she drowned herself ?” 

“Many things have been said since her disappearance,” 
Olivia Marcbmont answered. “Some people say one thing, 
some another.” 

“ And it has been said that ube—that she was drowned ?” 

“Yes, many people have said so. The river was dragged 
while Mr. Paulette was here, and after he went away. The 
men were at work with the drags for more than a week," 

“ And they found nothing ?” 


188 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 


“Was there any other reason for supposing that—that my 
wife fell into the river?” 

“ Only one reason.” 

“What was that?” 

“ I will show you,” Olivia Marchmont answered. 

She took a bunch of keys from her pocket, and went to an 
old-fashioned bureau or cabinet upon the other side of the room. 
She unlocked the upper part of this bureau, opened one ot the 
drawers, and took from it something which she brought to kid- 
ward Arundel. 

This something was a little shoe; a little shoe of soft, 
bronzed leather, stained and discolored with damp and moss, 
and trodden down upon one side, as if the wearer had walked 
a weary way in it, and had been unaccustomed to so much 
walking. 

Edward Arundel remembered, in that brief, childishly happy 
honeymoon at the little village near Winchester, how often he 
had laughed at his young wife’s propensity for walking about 
damp meadows in such delicate little slippers as were better 
adapted to the requirements of a ball-room. He remembered 
the slender foot, so small that he could take it in his hand; the 
feeble little foot that had grown tired in long wanderings by 
the Hampshire trout-streams, but which had toiled on in heroic 
self-abnegation so long as it was the will of the sultan to pedes- 
trianize. 

“Was this found by the river-side ?” he asked, looking pite¬ 
ously at the slipper which Mrs. Marchmont had put into his 
hand. 

“Yes; it was found among the rushes on the shore, a mile 
below the spot at which Mr. Weston saw my step-daughter.” 

Edward Arundel put the little shoe into his bosom. 

“ I’ll not believe it,” he cried, suddenly; “ I’ll not believe that 
my darling is lost to me. She was too good, far too good, to 
think of suicide; and Providence would never suffer my poor 
lonely child to be led away to a dreary death upon that dismal 
river-shore. No, no; she fled away from this place because she 
was too wretched here. She went away to hide herself among 
those whom she could trust, until her husband came to claim 
her. I will believe anything in the world except that she is 
lost to me. And I will not believe that, I will never believe 
that, until I look down at her corpse; until I lay my hand on her 
cold breast, and feel that her true heart has ceased beating. As 
I went out of this place four mopths ago to look for her, I will 
go again now. My darling, my darling, my innocent pet, my 
childish bride; I will go to the very end of the world in search 
of you.” 

The widow ground her teeth as she listened to her kinsman’s 
passionate words. Why did he forever goad her to blacker 
wickedness by this parade of his love for Mary ? Why did he 
force her to remember every moment how much ca\;se she had 
to hate this pale-faced girl? 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 189 

Captain Arundel rose, and walked a few paces, leaning on his 
stick as he went. 

“You will sleep here to-night, of course?” Olivia Marchmont 
said. 

“ Sleep here!” 

His tone expressed plainly enough that the place was utterly 
abhorrent to him. 

“ Yes; where else should you stay ?” 

“ I meant to have stopped at the nearest inn.” 

“The nearest inn is at Kemberling.” 

“ That would suit me well enough,” the young man an¬ 
swered, indifferently; “I must be in Kemberling early to-mor¬ 
row, for I must see Paul Marchmont. 1 am no nearer the com¬ 
prehension of my wife’s flight by anything that you have told 
me. It is to Paul Marchmont that I must look next. Heaven 
help him if he tries to keep the truth from me.” 

“ You will see Mr. Marchmont here as easily as at Kember¬ 
ling,” Olivia answered. “ He comes here every day.” 

“What for?” 

“ He has built a sort of painting-room down by the river-side, 
and he paints there whenever there is light.” 

“Indeed!” cried Edward Arundel; “he makes himself at 
home at Marchmont Towers, then ?” 

“ He has a right to do so, I suppose,” answered the widow, 
indifferently. “If Mary Marchmont is dead, this place and all 
belonging to it is his. As it is, I am only here on sufferance.” 

“ He has taken possession, then ?” 

“On the contrary, he shrinks from doing so.” 

“ And, by the Heaven above us, he does wisely,” cried Ed¬ 
ward Arundel. “No man shall seize upon that which-belongs 
to my darling. No foul plot of this artist-traitor shall rob her of 
her own. God knows how little value I set upon her wealth; 
but I will stand between her and those who try to rob her, until 
my last gasp. No, Olivia, I’ll not stay home; I’ll accept no hos¬ 
pitality from Mr. Marchmont. I suspect him too much.” 

He walked to the door; but before he reached it the widow 
went to one of the windows, and pushed aside the blind. 

“ Look at the rain,” she said; “ hark at it—don’t you hear it 
drip, drip, drip upon the stone? I wouldn't turn a dog out of 
doors upon such a night as this; and you—you are so ill—so 
weak. Edward Arundel, do you hate me so much that you re¬ 
fuse to share the same shelter with me, even for a night?” 

There is nothing so difficult of belief to a man who is not a 
coxcomb as the simple fact that he is beloved by a woman 
whom he does not love, and has never wooed by word or deed. 
But for this surely Edward Arundel must, in that sudden burst 
of tenderness, that one piteous appeal, have discovered a clew 
to his cousin’s secret. 

H? discovered nothing; he guessed nothing. But he was 
touched by her tone, even in spite of his utter ignorance of its 
meaning, and he replied, in an altered manner: 

“ Certainly, Olivia, if you really wish it, I will stay. Heaven 
knows I have no desire that you and I should be ill friends. I 


190 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


want your help; your pity, perhaps. I am quite willing to be¬ 
lieve that any cruel things you said to Mary arose from an out¬ 
break of temper. I cannot think that you could be base at heart. 
I will even attribute your disbelief of the statement made by my 
poor girl as to our marriage to the narrow prejudices learned in 
a dismal country town. Let us be friends, Olivia.” 

He held out ids hand. His cousin laid her cold fingers in his 
open palm, and lie shuddered as if he had come in contact with 
a corpse. There was nothing very cordial in the salutation. 
The two hands seemed to drop asunder, lifeless and inert; as if 
to bear mute witness that between these two people there was 
no possibility of sympathy or union. 

But Captain Arundel accepted his cousin’s hospitality. In¬ 
deed, he had need to do so; for he found that his valet had re¬ 
lied upon his master’s stopping at the Towers, and had sent the 
carriage back to Swampington. A tray with cold meat and 
wine was brought into the drawing-room for the young soldier’s 
refreshment. He drank a glass of Madeira, and made some pre¬ 
tense of eating a few mouthfuls, out of courtesy to Olivia; but 
he did this almost mechanically. He sat silent and gloomy, 
brooding over the terrible shock that he had so newly received; 
brooding over the hidden things that had happened in that 
dreary interval, during which he had been as powerless to de¬ 
fend his wife from trouble as a dead man. 

Again and again the cruel thought returned to him, each time 
with a fresh agony—that if he had written to his mother, if he 
had told her the story of his marriage, the things which bad 
happened could never have come to pass. Mary would have 
been sheltered and protected by a good and loving woman. 
This thought, this horrible self-reproach, was the bitterest thing 
the young man had to bear. 

“ It is too great a punishment,” he thought; “ lam too cruelly 
punished for having forgotten everything in my happiness with 
my darling.” 

The widow sat in her low easy-chair near the fire, with her 
eyes fixed upon the burning coals; the grate had been re¬ 
plenished, and the light of the red blaze shone full upon Olivia 
Marchmont’s haggard face. Edward Arundel, aroused for a few 
moments out of his gloomy abstraction, was surprised at the 
change which an interval of a few months had made in his 
cousin. The gloomy shadow which he had often seen on her 
face had become a fixed expression; every line had deepened, as 
if by the wear and tear of ten years, rather than by the pro¬ 
gress of a few months. Olivia Marchmont had grown old be¬ 
fore her time. Nor was this the only change. There was a 
look, undefined and. undefinable, in the large luminous gray 
eyes, unnaturally luminous now, which filled Edward Arundel 
with a vague sense of terror, a terror which he would not— 
which he dared not—attempt to analyze. He remembered 
Mary’s unreasoning fear of her step-mother, and he now 
scarcely wondered at that fear. There was something almost 
weird and unearthly in the aspect of the woman sitting opposite 
to him by the broad" hearth; no vestige of color in her gloomy 


JOHN MARCIlMONT'S LEGACY. 191 

face, a strange light burning in her eyes, and herblack draperies 
falling round her in straight lusterless folds. 

“ I fear you have been ill, Olivia,” the young man said 
presently. 

Another sentiment had arisen in his breast side by side with 
that vague terror—a fancy that perhaps there was some reason 
why his cousin should be pitied. 

“ Yes,” she answered, indifferently; as if no subject of which 
Captain Arundel could have spoken would have been of less 
concern to her—“yes, I have been very ill.” 

“ I am sorry to hear it.” 

Olivia looked up at him, and smiled. Her smile was the 
strangest he had ever seen upon a woman’s face. 

“ I am very sorry to hear it. What has been the matter with 
you ?” 

“ Slow fever, Mr. Weston said.” 

“ Mr. Weston?” 

“Yes; Mr. Marchmont’s brother-in-law. He has succeeded 
to Mr. Dawnfield’s practice at Kemberling. He attended me, 
and he attended my step-daughter.” 

“ My wife was ill, then ?” 

“Yes; she had brain fever; she recovered from that, but she 
did not recover strength. Her low spirits alarmed me, and I 
considered it only right—Mr. Marchmont suggested also—that 
a medical man should be consulted.” 

“And what did this man, this Mr. Weston, say?” 

“ Very little; there was nothing the matter with Mary, he said. 
He gave her a little medicine; but only in the desire of strength¬ 
ening her nervous system. He could give her no medicine that 
would have any very good effect upon her spirits while she 
chose to keep herself obstinately apart from every one.” 

The young man’s head sunk upon his breast. The image of 
his desolate young wife arose before him; the image of a pale, 
sorrowful girl, holding herself apart from her persecutors, aban¬ 
doned. lonely, despairing. Why had she remained at March¬ 
mont Towers? Why had she ever consented to go there, when 
she had again and again expressed such terror of her step¬ 
mother? Why had she not rather followed her husband down 
to Devonshire, and thrown herself upon his relatives for pro¬ 
tection ? Was it like this loving girl to remain quietly here in 
Lincolnshire, when the man she loved with such innocent devo¬ 
tion was lying between life and death away in the west ? 

“ She is such a child,” he thought—“ such a child in her igno¬ 
rance of the world. I must not reason about her as I would 
about another woman.” 

And then a sudden flush of passionate emotion rose to his 
face, as a new thought flashed into his mind. What if this 
helpless girl had been detained by force at Marchmont Towers? 

“Olivia,” he cried, “whatever baseness this man Paul 
Marchmont may be capable of, you at least must be superior to 
any deliberate sin. I have all my life believed in you, and re¬ 
spected you as a good woman. Tell me the truth, then, for 
pity’s sake. Nothing that you can tell me will fill up the dead 


192 JOHN MARCHMONT*S LEGACY. 

blank that the horrible interval since my accident has made in 
my life. But you can give me some help. A few words from 
you may clear away much of this darkness. How did you find 
my wife ? How did you induce her to come back to this place? 
1 know that she had an unreasonable dread of returning here. 

“ I found her through the agency of Mr. Marchmont,” Olivia 
answered, quietly. “ I had some difficulty in inducing her to 
return here: but after hearing of your accident ” 

“ How was the news of that broken to her ?” 

“ Unfortunately she saw a paper that had happened to be left 
in her way.” 

“ By whom ?” 

“By Mr. Marchmont.” 

“ Where was this?” 

“ In Hampshire.” 

“ Indeed! then Paul Marchmont went with you to Hamp¬ 
shire ?” 

“ He did. He was of great service to me in this crisis. After 
seeing the paper my step-daughter was seized with brain-fever. 
She was unconscious when we brought her back to the Towers. 
She was nursed by ray old servant Barbara, and had the high¬ 
est medical care. I do not think that anything more could 
have been done for her.” 

“No,” answered Edward Arundel, bitterly; “unless you 
could have loved her.” 

“ We cannot force our affections,” the widow said, in a hard 
voice. 

Another voice in her breast seemed to whisper, “ Why do you 
reproach me for not having loved this girl ? If you had loved 
me, the whole world would have been different.” 

“Olivia Marchmont,” said Captain Arundel, “ by your own 
avowal there has never been any affection for this orphan girl 
iu your heart. It is not my business to dwell upon the fact, as 
something almost unnatural under the peculiar circumstances 
through w^hich that helpless child was cast upon your protec¬ 
tion. It is needless to try to understand why you have hardened 
your heart against my poor wife. Enough that it is so. But I 
may still believe that, whatever your feelings may be toward 
your dead husband’s daughter, you would not be guilty of any 
deliberate act of treachery against her. I can afford to believe 
this of you; but I cannot believe it of Paul Marchmont. That 
man is my wife’s natural enemy, If he has been here during 
my illness, he has been here to plot against her. When he came 
here, he came to attempt her destruction. She stands between 
him and this estate. Long ago, when I was a careless school¬ 
boy, my poor friend John Marchmont told me that, if ever the 
day came upon which Mary’s interests should be opposed to the 
interests of her cousin, that man w T ould be a dire and bitter 
enemy; so much the more terrible because in all appearance her 
friend. The day came; and I, to whom the orphan girl had 
been left as a sacred legacy, was not by to defend her. But I 
have risen from the bed that many have thought a bed of death; 
and I come to this place with one indomitable resolution para* 


JOHN MARCHMONT\S LEGACY. 


193 


mount in my breast—the determination to find my wife, and to 
bring condign punishment upon the man who has done her 
wrong.” 

Captain Arundel spoke in a low voice; but his passion was not 
the more terrible because of the suppression of those common 
outward evidences by which fury ordinarily betrays itself. He 
relasped into thoughtful silence. 

Olivia made no answer to anything that he said. She sat 
looking at him steadily, with an admiring awe m her face. 
How splendid he was, this young hero, even in his sickness and 
feebleness! How splendid, by reason of the grand courage, the 
chivalrous devotion, that shone out of his blue eyes! 

The clock struck eleven while the cousins sat opposite to each 
other—only divided, physically, by the width of the tapestried 
hearth-rug; but, oh, how many weary miles asunder in spirit! 
—and Edward Arundel rose, startled from his sorrowful 
reverie. 

“ If I were a strong man,” he said, “ I would see Paul March- 
mont to-night. But I must wait till to-morrow morning. At 
what time does he come to his painting-room ?” 

“At eight o’clock when the mornings are bright, but later 
when the weather is dull.” 

“ At eight o’clock! I pray Heaven the sun may shine early 
to-morrow. I pray Heaven I may not have to wait long before 
I find myself face to face with that man! Good-night, Olivia!” 

He took a candle from a table near the door, and lit it almost 
mechanically. He found Mr. Morrison waiting for him, very 
sleepy and despondent, in a large bedchamber in which Captain 
Arundel had never slept before—a dreary apartment, decked out 
with the faded splendors of the past; a chamber in which the 
restless sleeper might expect to see a phantom lady in a ghostly 
sack, cowering over the embers, and spreading her transparent 
hands above the red light. 

“ It isn’t particular comfortable, after Dangerfield,” the valet 
muttered, in a melancholy voice; “ and all I ’ope, Mr. Edward, 
is that the sheets are not damp. I’ve been a stirrin’ of the fire 
and puttin’ on fresh coals for the last hour. There’s a bed for 
me in the dressin’ room, within call.” 

Captain Arundel scarcely heard w hat his servant said to him. 
He w^as standing at the door of the spacious chamber, looking 
out into a long, low^-roofed corridor, in which he had just en¬ 
countered Barbara, Mrs. Marchmont’s confidential attendant— 
the wooden-faced, inscrutable-looking woman who, according to 
Olivia, had watched and ministered to his wife. 

“Was that the tenderest face that looked down upon my 
darling as she lay on her sick-bed ?” he thought. “ I had almost 
as soon have had a ghoul to watch by my poor dear’s pillow\ 


CHAPTER XXII. 

THE PAINTING-ROOM BY THE RIVER. 

Edward Arundel lay awake through the best part of that 
JKTovpmher night, listening to the ceaseless dripping of the rain 



JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


m 

upon the terrace, and thinking of Paul Marchmont. It was of 
this man he must demand an account of his wife. Nothing that 
Olivia had told him had in any way lessened this determination. 
The little slipper found by the water’s edge; the placard flapping 
on the moss-grown pillar at the entrance to the park; the story of 
a possible suicide, or a more probable accident—all these things 
were as nothing beside the young man’s suspicion of Paul 
Marchmont. He had pooh-poohed John’s dread of his kinsman 
as weak and unreasonable; and now. with the same unreason, 
he was ready to condemn this man, whom he had never seen, 
as a traitor and a plotter against his young wife. 

He lay tossing from side to side all that night, weak and 
feverish, with great drops of cold perspiration rolling down his 
pale face, sometimes falling into a fitful sleep, in whose dis¬ 
torted dreams Paul Marchmont was forever present, now one 
man now another. There was no sense of fitness in these 
dreams; for sometimes Edward Arundel and the artist were 
wrestling together with newly-sharpened daggers in their eager 
hands, each thirsting for the other's blood; and in the next mo¬ 
ment they were friends, and had been friendly—as it seemed— 
for years. 

The young man woke from one of these last dreams, with 
words of good-fellowship upon his lips, to find the morning 
light gleaming through the narrow openings in the damask 
window-curtains, and Mr. Morrison laying out his master’s 
dressing apparatus upon the carved oak toilet-table. 

Captain Arundel dressed himself as fast as he could, with the 
assistance of the valet, and then made his way down the broad 
staircase, with the help of his cane, upon which he had 
need to lean pretty heavily, for he was as weak as a child. 

“You had better give me the brandy-flask, Morrison,” he 
said. “I am going out before breakfast. You may as well 
come down with me, by the bye; for I doubt if I could walk as 
far as I want to go, without the help of your arm.” 

In the hall Captain Arundel found one of the servants. The 
western door was open, and the man was standing on the 
threshold looking out at the morning. The rain had ceased; 
but the day did not yet promise to be very bright, for the sun 
gleamed like a ball of burnished copper through a pale Novem¬ 
ber mist. 

“ Do you know if Mr. Paul Marchmont has gone down to the 
boat-house?” Edward asked. 

“Yes, sir,” the man answered: “I met him just now in 
the quadrangle. He’d been having a cup of coffee with my 
mistress.” 

Edward started. They were friends, then, Paul Marchmont 
and Olivia!—friends, but surely not allies! Whatever villainy 
this man might be capable of committing, Olivia must at least 
be guiltless of any deliberate treachery. 

Captain Arundel took his servant’s arm and walked out into 
the quadrangle, and from the quadrangle to the low-lying 
woody swamp, vvliere the stunted trees looked grim and weird, 
like in their leafless ugliness. Weak as the young man was*, he 


JOHN MARCHMONT ’£ LEGACY. 


195 


walked rapidly across the sloppy ground, which had been almost 
flooded by the continual rains. He was borne up by his fierce 
desire to be face to face with Paul Marchmont. The savage 
energy of his mind was stronger than any physical debility. 
He dismissed Mr. Morrison as soon as he was within sight of the 
boat-house, and went on alone, leaning on his stick, and pausing 
now and then to draw breath, angry with himself for his weak¬ 
ness. 

The boat-house, and the pavilion above it, had been patched 
up by some country workmen. A handful of plaster here and 
there, a little new brickwork, and a mended window-frame, 
bore witness of this. The ponderous old-fashioned wooden 
shutters had been repaired, and a good deal of the work which 
had been begun in John Marcbmont’s lifetime had now, in a 
certain rough manner, been completed. The place which had 
hitherto appeared likely to fall into utter decay had been ren¬ 
dered weather-tight and habitable; the black smoke creeping 
slowly upward from the ivy-covered chimney, gave evidence of 
occupation. Beyond this, a large wooden shed, with a wide 
window fronting the north, had been erected close against the 
boat-house. This rough shed Edward Arundel at once under¬ 
stood to be the painting-room which the artist had built for 
himself. 

He paused a moment outside the door of this shed. A man’s 
voice—a tenor voice, rather thin and metallic in quality—was 
singing a scrap of Eossini upon the other side of the frail wood¬ 
work. 

Edward Arundel knocked with the handle of his stick upon 
the door. The voice left off singing to say “ Come in.” 

The soldier opened the door, crossed the threshold, and stood 
face to face with Paul Marchmont in the bare wooden shed. 
The painter had dressed himself for his work. His coat and 
waistcoat lay upon a chair near the door. He had put on a 
canvas-jacket, and bad drawn a loose pair of linen trousers over 
those which belonged to his usual costume. So far as this paint- 
besmeared coat and trousers went, nothing could have been 
more slovenly than Paul Marchmont’s appearance; but some 
tinge of foppery exhibited itself in the black velvet smoking- 
cap, which contrasted with and set off the silvery whiteness of 
his hair, as well as in the delicate curve of his amber mustache. 
A mustache was not a very common adornment in the year 
1848. It was rather an eccentricity affected by artists, and per¬ 
mitted as the wild caprice of irresponsible beings, not amenable 
to the laws that govern rational and respectable people. 

Edward Arundel sharply scrutinized the face and figure of 
the artist. He cast a rapid glance round the bare whitewashed 
walls of the shed, trying to read even in those bare walls some 
chance clew to the painter’s character. But there was not 
much to be gleaned from the details of that almost empty cham¬ 
ber. A dismal, black-looking iron stove, with a crooked chim- 
nev, stood in one corner. A great easel occupied the center of 
the room. A sheet of tin, nailed upon a wooden shutter, swung 
backward and forward against the northern window, blown to 


196 


JOHN MARCHMONNS LEGACY. 


and fro by the damp wind that crept in through the crevices in 
the framework of the roughly-fashioned casement. A heap of 
canvases were piled against the walls, and here and there a 
half-finished picture—a lurid Turneresque landscape; a black 
stormy sky; a rocky mountain pass, dyed blood-red by the set¬ 
ting sun—was propped up against the whitewashed back¬ 
ground. 

Scattered scraps of water-color, crayon, old engravings, 
sketches torn and tumbled, bits of rock-work and foliage, lay 
littered about the floor; and on a paint-stained deal-table of the 
roughest and plainest fashion were gathered the color-tubes and 
pallets, the brushes and sponges and dirty cloths, the greasy 
and sticky tin cans, which form the paraphernalia of an artist. 
Opposite the northern window was the moss-grown stone stair¬ 
case leading up to the pavilion over the boat-house. Mr. March- 
mont had built his painting-room against the side of the pavilion, 
in such a manner as to shut in the staircase and doorway which 
formed the only entrance to it. His excuse for the awkward¬ 
ness of this piece of architecture was the impossibility of other¬ 
wise getting the all-desirablenorthern light for the illumination 
of his rough studio. 

This was the chamber in which Edward Arundel found the 
man from whom he came to demand an account of his wife’s 
disappearance. The artist was evidently quite prepared to re¬ 
ceive his visitor. He made no pretense of being taken off his 
guard, as a meaner pretender might have dono. One of Paul 
Marchmont’s theories was, that as it is only a fool who would 
use brass where he could as easily employ gold, so it is only a 
fool that tells a lie when he can conveniently tell the truth. 

“Captain Arundel, I believe?” he said, pushing a chair for¬ 
ward for his visitor. “ I am sorry to say I recognize you by 
your appearance of ill-health. Mrs. Marchmont told me you 
wanted to see me. Does my meerschaum annoy you ? I’ll put 
it out if it does. No? Then, if you’ll allow me. I’ll go on smok¬ 
ing. Some people say tobacco give^ a tone to one’s pictures. If 
so, mine ought to be Rembrandts in depth of color.” 

Edward Arundel dropped into the chair that had been offered 
to him. If be could by any possibility have rejected even this 
amount of hospitality from Paul Marchmont he would have 
done so; but he was a great deal too weak to stand, and he knew 
that his interview with the artist must be a long one. 

“Mr. Marchmont,” he said, “if my cousin Olivia told you 
that you might expect to see me here to-day, she most likely 
told you a great deal more. Did she tell you that I look to you 
to account to me for the disappearance of my wife?” 

Paul Marchmont shrugged his shoulders, as who should say, 
“ This young man is an invalid. I must not suffer myself to be 
aggravated by his absurdity.” Then taking his meerschaum 
from his lips, he sat it down, and seated himself at a few paces 
from Edward Arundel, on the lowest of the moss-grown steps 
leading up to the pavilion. 

“ My dear Captain Aiundel,” he said, very gravely, “your 
sousia did repeat to me a great deal of last night’s conversation. 


197 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

She told me that you had spoken of me with a degree of violence 
natural enough, perhaps, to a hot-tempered young soldier, but 
in no manner justified by our relations. When you call upon 
me to account for the disappearance of Mary Marchmont, you 
act about as rationally as if you declared me answerable for 
the pulmonary complaint that carried away her father. If, on 
the other hand, you call upon me to assist you in the endeavor 
to fathom the mystery of her disappearance, you will find me 
ready and willing to aid you to the very uttermost. It is to my 
interest as much as to yours that this mystery should be cleared 
up.” 

“ And in the meantime you take possession of this estate?” 

“No, Captain Arundel. The law would allow me to do so; 
but I decline to touch one farthing of the revenue which this 
estate yields, or to commit one act of ownership, until the mys¬ 
tery of Mary Marchmont’s disappearance, or of her death, is 
cleared up.” 

“ The mystery of her death!” said Edward Arundel; “you be¬ 
lieve, then, that she is dead?” 

“I anticipate nothing; I think nothing,” answered the artist; 
“ I only wait. The mysteries of life are so many and so incom¬ 
prehensible—the stories, which are every day to be read by any 
man who takes the trouble to look through a newspaper, are so 
strange, and savor so much of the improbabilities of a novel-writ¬ 
er’s first wild fiction—that lam ready to believe everything and 
anything. Mary Marchmont struck me, from the first moment 
in which I saw her, as sadly deficient in mental power. Nothing 
she could do would astonish me. She may be hiding herself 
away from us, prompted only by some eccentric fancy of her 
own. She may have fallen into the power of designing people. 
She may have purposely placed her slipper by the water-side in 
order to give an idea of an accident or a suicide, or she may have 
dropped it there by chance and walked barefoot to the nearest 
railway station. She acted unreasonably before when she ran 
away from Marchmont Towers; she may have acted unreason¬ 
ably again.” 

“ You do not think, then, that she is dead ?” 

“I hesitate to form any opinion; T positively decline to ex¬ 
press one.” 

Edward Arundel gnawed savagely at the ends of his mustache. 

This man’s cool imperturbability, which had none of the 
studied smoothness of hypocrisy, but which seemed rather the 
plain candor of a thorough man of the world, who had no wish 
to pretend to any sentiment he did not feel, baffled and infuri¬ 
ated the passionate young soldier. Was it possible that this 
man, who met him with such cool self-assertion, who in no 
manner avoided any discussion of Mary Marchmont’s disappear¬ 
ance—was it possible that he could have had any treacherous 
and guilty part in that calamity ? Olivia’s manner looked like 
guilt; but Paul Marchmont’s seemed the personification of inno¬ 
cence. Not angry innocence, indignant that its purity should 
have been suspected; but the matter-of-fact, commonplace in* 


198 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY . 

nocence of a man of the world, who is a great deal too clever 
to play any hazardous and villainous game. 

“You can perhaps answer me this question, Mr. Marchmont, 
said Edward Arundel. “ Why. was my wife doubted when she 
told the story of her marriage?” 

The artist smiled, and rising from his seat upon the stone step, 
took a pocket-book from one of the pockets of the coat that be 
had been wearing. 

“ I can answer that question,” he said, selecting a paper from 
among others in the pocket-book. “ This will answer it.” 

He handed Edward Arundel the paper, which w T as a letter 
folded lengthways and indorsed, “ From Mrs. Arundel, August 
31st.” Within this letter was another paper, indorsed, “ Copy 
of letter to Mrs. Arundel, August 28th.” 

“ You had better read the copy first,” Mr. Marchmont said, as 
Edward looked doubtfully at the inner paper. 

The copy vras very brief, and ran thus: 

“ Marchmont Towers, August 28, 1848. 

“ Madam,—I have been given to understand that your son, 
Captain Arundel, within a fortnight of his sad accident, con¬ 
tracted a secret marriage with a young lady whose name I, for 
several reasons, prefer to withhold. If you can oblige me by 
informing me whether there is any foundation for this statement 
you will confer a very great favor upon 

“ Your obedient servant, PAUL MARCHMONT.” 

The answer to this letter, in the hand of Edward Arundel's 
mother, was equally brief: 

“ Dangerfield Park, August 31, 1848. 

“ Sir,— In reply to your inquiry, I beg to state that there can 
be no foundation whatever for the report to which you allude. 
My son is too honorable to contract a secret marriage; and al¬ 
though his present unhappy state renders it impossible for me 
to receive the assurance from his own lips, my confidence in his 
high principles justifies me in contradicting any such report as 
that which forms the subject of your letter. I am, sir, yours 
obediently, Letitia Arundel.” 

The soldier stood, mute and confounded, with his mother’s 
letter in his hand. It seemed as if every creature had been 
against the helpless girl whom he had made his wdfe. Every 
hand had been lifted to drive her from the house that was her 
own; to drive her out upon the world, of which she was igno¬ 
rant. a wanderer and an outcast; perhaps to drive her to a cruel 
death. 

“ You can scarcely wonder if the receipt of that letter con¬ 
firmed me in my previous belief that Mary Marchmont’s story 
of a marriage arose out of the weakness of a brain never tod 
strong, and at that time very touch enfeebled by the effect of a 
fever,” 

Edward Arundel was silent. lie crushed bis mother’s letter 
in his hand, Even his mother—efeh bi© moth&r^that tender 
Ww wswa, pttimu toa be had 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


199 


promised, ten years before, in the lobby of Drury Lane, to John 
Marchmont’s motherless child—even she, by some hideous 
fatality, had helped to bring grief and shame upon the lonely 
girl. All this story of his young wife’s disappearance seemed 
enveloped in a wretched obscurity, through whose thick dark¬ 
ness he could not penetrate. He felt himself encompassed by a 
web of mystery athwart which it was impossible for him to cut 
his way to the truth. He asked question after question, and re¬ 
ceived answers which seemed freely given; but the story re¬ 
mained as dark as ever. What did it all mean? What was the 
clew to the mystery ? Was this man, Paul Marchmont—busy 
among his unfinished pictures, and bearing in his every action, 
in his every word, the stamp of an easy-going, free-spoken sol¬ 
dier of fortune—likely to have been guilty of any dark and 
subtle villainy against the missing girl? He had disbelieved in 
the marriage; but he had had some reason for his doubt of a 
fact that could not very well be welcome to him. 

The young man rose from his chair, and stood irresolute, 
brooding over these things. 

“ Come, Captain Arundel,” cried Paul Marchmont, heartily, 
“believeme, though I have not much superfluous sentimental¬ 
ity left in my composition after a pretty long encounter with 
the world, still I can truly sympathize with your regret for this 
poor silly child. 1 hope, for your sake, that she still lives, and 
is hiding herself out of some persistent folly. Perhaps, now 
you are able to act in the business, there may be a better chance 
of finding her. I am old enough to be your father, and am 
ready to give you the help of any knowledge of the world which 
I may have gathered in the experience of a lifetime. Will you 
accept my help?” 

Edward Arundel paused for a moment, with his head still 
bent, and his eyes fixed upon the ground. Then suddenly lift¬ 
ing hi? head, he looked full in the artist’s face as he answered 
him. 

“No!” he cried. “ Your offer may be made in all good faith, 
and if so, l thank you for it; but no one loves this missing girl 
as I love her; no one has so good a right as I have to protect 
and shelter her. I will look for my wife alone, unaided; ex¬ 
cept by such help as 1 pray that God may give me.” 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

IN THE DARE. 

Edward Arundel walked slowly back to the Towers, shaken 
in body, perplexed in mind, baffled, disappointed, and most 
miserable; the young husband, whose married life had been 
shut within the compass of a brief honeymoon, went back to 
that dark and gloomy mansion within whose encircling walls 
Mary had pined and despaired. 

“Why did she stop here?” he thought; “ why didn’t she come 
to me? I thought her first impulse would have brought her to 
me* I thought my poor childish love would hav® set out osa 
fy&k-to *«®fc twifeaitfl* I# * •* 



200 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


He groped his way feebly and wearily amidst the leafless 
wood, and through the rotting vegetation decaying in oozy 
slime beneath the black shelter of the naked trees. He groped 
his way toward the dismal eastern front of the great stone 
dwelling-house, his face always turned toward the blank win¬ 
dows that stared down at him from the discolored walls. 

“ Oh, if they could speak!” he exclaimed, almost beside him¬ 
self in his perplexity and desperation; “if they could speak! 
If those cruel walls could speak, and tell me what my darling 
suffered within their shadow! If they could tell me why she 
despaired, and ran away to hide herself from her husband and 
protector! If they could speak!” 

He ground his teeth in a passion of sorrowful rage. 

“I should gain as much by questioning yonder stone-wall as 
by talking to my cousin, Olivia Marchmont,” he thought, pres¬ 
ently. “Why is that woman so venomous a creature in her 
hatred of my innocent wife? Why is it that, whether I 
threaten or whether I appeal, I can gain nothing from her— 
nothing? She baffles me as completely by her measured an¬ 
swers, which seem to reply to my questions, and which tell me 
nothing, as if she were a brazen image set up by the dark igno¬ 
rance of a heathen people, and dumb in the absence of an im¬ 
postor priest. She baffles me, question her how I will. And 
Paul Marchmont again—what have I learned from him ? Am I 
a fool, that people can prevaricate and lie to me like this? Has 
my brain no sense, and my arm no strength, that I cannot 
wring the truth from the false throats of these wretches?” 

The young man gnashed his teeth again in the violence of his 
rage. 

Yes, it was like a dream; it was like nothing but a dream. In 
dreams he had often felt this terrible sense of impotence wrest¬ 
ling with a mad desire to achieve something or other. But 
never before in his waking hours had the young soldier experi¬ 
enced such a sensation. 

He stopped, irresolute, almost bewildered, looking back at the 
boat-house, a black spot far away down by the sedgy brink of the 
slow river, and then again turning his face toward the monot¬ 
onous lines of windows in the eastern frontage of Marchmont 
Towers. 

“I let that man play with me to-day,” he thought; “but 
our reckoning is to come. We have not done with each other 
yet.” 

He walked on to the low archway leading into the quad¬ 
rangle. 

The room which had been John Marcbmont’s study, and which 
his widow had been wont to occupy since his death, looked 
into this quadrangle. Edward Arundel saw his cousin’s dark 
head bending over a book, or a desk, perhaps, behind the win¬ 
dow. 

“ Let her beware of me, if she has done any wrong to my wife!” 
he thought. “ To which of these people am I to look for an ac¬ 
count of mv poor lost girl ? To which of these two am I to look ? 
Heaven guide me to find the guilty one; and Heaven have mercy 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


20.1 

upon that wretched creature when the hour of reckoning comes, 
for I will have none!” 

Olivia Marchmont, looking through the window, saw her 
kinsman’s face while this thought was in his mind. The expres¬ 
sion which she saw there was so terrible, so merciless, so sub¬ 
lime in its grand and vengeful beauty, that her own face 
blanched even to a paler hue than that which had lately become 
habitual to it. 

“ Am I afraid of him ?” she thought, as she pressed her fore¬ 
head against the cold glass, and by a physical effort restrained 
the convulsive throbbing that had suddenly shaken her frame. 
“ Am I afrid of him? No! what injury can he inflict upon me 
worse than that which he has done me from the very first? 
If he could drag me to a scaffold, and deliver me with his 
own hands into the grasp of the hangman, he would do me no 
deeper wrong than he has done me from the hour of my earli¬ 
est remembrance of him. He could inflict no new pangs, no 
sharper torture, than I have been accustomed to suffer at his 
hands. He does not love me. He has never loved me. He 
never will love me. That is my wrong; and it is for that I take 
my revenge!” 

She lifted her head, which had rested in a sullen attitude 
against the glass, and looked at the soldier’s figure slowly ad¬ 
vancing toward the western side of the house. 

Then with a smile—the same horrible smile which Edward 
Arundel had seen light up her face on the previous night—she 
muttered between her set teeth. 

“Shall I be sorry because this vengeance has fallen across 
my pathway? Shall I repent, and try to undo what I have 
done? Shall I thrust myself between others and Mr. Edward 
Arundel? Shall / make myself the ally and champion of this 
gallant soldier, who seldom speaks to me except to insult and 
upbraid me? Shall 1 take justice into my hands, and interfere 
for my kinsman’s benefit? No; he has chosen to threaten me; 
he has chosen to believe vile things of me. From the first his 
indifference has been next kin to insolence. Let him take care 
of himself.” 

Edward Arundel took no heed of the gray eyes that watched 
him with such a vengeful light in their fixed gaze! He was 
still thinking of his missing wife, still feeling, to a degree that 
was intolerably painful, that miserable dream-like sense of utter 
helplessness and prostration. 

“ What am I to do?” he thought. “ Shall I be forever going 
backward and forward between my Cousin Olivia and Paul 
Marchmont? forever questioning them, first one and then the 
other, and never getting any nearer to the truth ?” 

He asked himself this question, because the extreme anguish, 
the intense anxiety, which he had endured seemed to have mag¬ 
nified the smallest events, and to have multiplied a hundredfold 
the lapse of time. It seemed as if he had already spent half a 
lifetime in his search after John Marchmont’s lost daughter. 

“ Oh, my friend, my friend!” he thought, as some faint link 
pf association, some memory thrust upon him by the aspect of 


202 


JOHN MARCHMONTS LEGACY. 


the place in which he was, brought back the simple-minded 
tutor who had taught him mathematics eighteen years before— 
“ my poor friend, if this girl had not been my love and my 
wife, surely the memory of your trust in me would b£ 
enough to make me a desperate and merciless avenger of her 
wrongs.” 

He went into the hall, and from the hall to the tenantless 
western drawing-room—a dreary chamber, with its grim and 
faded splendor, its stiff, old-fashioned furniture; a chamber 
which, unadorned by the presence of youth and iunocence, had 
the aspect of belonging to a day that was gone and people that 
were dead. So might have looked one of those sealed-up 
chambers in the buried cities of Italy, when the doors were 
opened, and eager living eyes first looked in upon the habita¬ 
tions of the dead. 

Edward Arundel walked up and down the empty drawing¬ 
room. There were the ivory chessmen that he had brought 
from India, under a glass shacle on an inlaid table in a window, 
How often he and Mary had played together in that very win¬ 
dow! and how she had always lost her pawns, and left bishops 
and knights undefended, while trying to achieve impossible 
conquests with her queen! The young man paced slowly back¬ 
ward and forward across the old-fashioned bordered carpet, try¬ 
ing to think what he should do. He must form some plan of 
action in his own mind, he thought. There was foul work 
somewhere, he most implicitly believed; and it was for him to 
discover the motive of the treachery and the person of the 
traitor. 

Paul Marchmont! Paul Marchmont! 

His mind always traveled back to this point. Paul March- 
mont was Mary’s natural enemy. Paul Marchmont was, there¬ 
fore, surely the man to be suspected, the man to be found out 
and defeated. 

And yet, if there was any truth in appearances, it was Olixia 
who was most inimical to the missing girl; it was Olivia whom 
Mary had feared; it was Olivia who had driven John March- 
mont’s orphan child from her home once, and who might, by 
the same power to tyrannise and torture a weak and yielding 
nature, have so banished her again. 

Or these two, Paul and Olivia, might both hate the defense¬ 
less girl, and might have between them plotted a wrong against 
her. 

“Who will tell me the truth about my lost darling?” cried 
Edward Arundel. “ Who will help me to look for my missing 
love?” 

His lost darling; his missing love. It was thus that the young 
man spoke of his wife. That dark thought which had been sug¬ 
gested to him by the words of Olivia, by the mute evidence of the 
little bronze slipper picked up near the river-brink, had never 
taken root, or held even a temporary place in his breast. He 
would not—nay, more, he could not— think that his wife was 
dead. In all his confused and miserable dreams that dreary 
November night, no dream had ever shown him that. No image 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


203 


of death had mingled itself with the distorted shadows that had 
tormented his sleep. No still white face had looked up at him 
through a veil of murky waters. No moaning sob of a rushing 
stream had. mixed its dismal sound with the many voices of his 
slumbers. No; he feared all manner of unknown sorrows; he 
looked vaguely forward to a sea of difficulty, to be waded across 
m blindness and bewilderment before he could clasp his rescued 
wife in his arms; but he never thought that she was dead. 

Presently the idea came to him that it was outside Marchmont 
Towers—away beyond the walls of this grim, enchanted castle, 
where evil spirits seemed to hold possession—that he should seek 
for the clew to his wife’s hiding-place. 

“ There is Hester, that girl who was fond of Mary/’ he thought. 

She may be able to tell me something, perhaps. I will go to 
her.” 

He went out into the hall to look for his servant, the faithful 
Morrison, who had been eating a very substantial breakfast with 
the domestics of the Towers—“ the sauce to meat ” being a pro¬ 
longed discussion of the facts connected with Mary Marchmont's 
disappearance and her relations with Edward Arundel—and 
who came, radiant and greasy from the enjoyment of hot but¬ 
tered cakes and Lincolnshire bacon, at the sound of his master’s 
voice. 

“I want you to get me some vehicle, and a lad who will 
drive me a few miles, Morrison,” the young soldier said; ‘‘or 
you can drive me yourself, perhaps ?” 

“Certainly, Master Edward; I have driven your pa often, 
when we was travelin’ together. I’ll go and see if there’s a 
phee-aton or a chay that will suit you, sir; something that goes 
easy on its springs.” 

“ Get anything,” muttered Captain Arundel, “ so long as you 
can get it without loss of time.” 

All fuss and anxiety upon the subject of his health worried 
the young man. He felt his head dizzied with weakness and 
excitement; his arm—that muscular right arm which had done 
him good service two years before in an encounter with a 
tigress—as weak as the jewel-bound wrist of a delicate woman. 
But he chafed against anything like consideration of his weak¬ 
ness; he rebelled against anything that seemed likely to hinder 
him in that one object upon which all the powers of his mind 
were bent. 

Mr. Morrison went away with some show of briskness, but 
dropped into a very leisurely pace as soon as he was fairly out 
of his master’s sight. He went straight to the stables, where he 
had a pleasant gossip with the grooms and hangers-on, and 
amused himself further by inspecting every bit of horse-flesh in 
the Marchmont stables, prior to selecting a quiet gray cob 
which he felt himself capable of driving, and an old-fashioned 
gig, with a yellow body and black-and-yellow wheels, bearing a 
strong resemblance to a monstrous wooden wasp. 

While the faithful attendant to whom Mrs. Arundel had dele¬ 
gated the care of her son was thus employed, the soldier stood 
in the stone hall, looking out at the dreary wintery landscape, 


m 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


and pining to hurry away across the dismal swamps to the vil* 
lage in which he hoped to hear tidings of her he sought. He 
was lounging in a deep open window-seat, looking hopelessly 
at that barren prospect, that monotonous expanse of flat morass 
aud leaden sky, when he heard a footstep behind him, and, turn¬ 
ing round, saw Olivia’s confidential servant, Barbara Simmons; 
the woman who had watched by his wife’s sick bed—the woman 
whom he had compared to a ghoul. 

She was walking slowly across the hall toward Olivia’s room, 
whither a bell had just summoned her. Mrs. Marchmont had 
lately grown fretful and capricious, and did not care to be 
waited upon by any one except this woman, who had known 
her from childhood, and was no stranger to her darkest moods. 

Edward Arundel had determined to appeal to every living 
creature who was likely to know anything of his wife’s disap¬ 
pearance, and he snatched the first opportunity of questioning 
this woman. 

“ Stop, Mrs. Simmons,” he said, moving away from the win¬ 
dow; “I w r ant to speak to you; I want to talk to you about my 
wife.” 

The woman turned to him with a blank face, whose expres¬ 
sionless stare might mean either genuine surprise, or an obstinate 
determination not to understand anything that might be said to 
her. 

“Your wife, Captain Arundel!” she said, in cold measured 
tones, but with an accent of astonishment. 

“Yes, my wife. Mary Marchmont, my lawfully-wedded 
wife. Look here, woman,” cried Edward Arundel; “if you 
cannot accept the word of a soldier, and an honorable man, you 
can, perhaps, believe the evidence of your eyes.” 

He took a morocco memorandum-book from his breast-pocket. 
It was full of letters, cards, bank-notes, and miscellaneous 
scraps of paper, carelessly stuifed into it, and among them Cap¬ 
tain Arundel found the certificate of his marriage, which he 
had put away at random upon his wedding morning, aud which 
had lain unheeded in his pocket-book ever since. 

“Look here!” he cried, spreading the document before the 
waiting-woman’s eyes, and pointing, with a shaking hand, to 
the lines. “ You believe that, I suppose?” 

“ Oh, yes, sir,” Barbara Simmons answered, after deliberately 
reading the certificate. “I have no reason to disbelieve it; no 
wish to disbelieve it.” 

“No, I suppose not,” muttered Edward Arundel; “unless 
you, too, are leagued with Paul Marchmont.” 

The woman did not flinch at this hinted accusation, but an¬ 
swered the young man in that slow and emotionless manner 
which no change of circumstances seemed to have power to 
alter. 

“I am leagued with no one, sir,” she said, coldly. “I serve 
no one except my mistress, Miss Olivia—I mean Mrs. March¬ 
mont.” 

The study-bell rang for the second time while she was speak¬ 
ing. 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 205 

“ I must go to my mistress, now, sir,” she said. “ You hear 
her ringing for me.” 

“ Go, then, and let me see you as you come back. I tell you 
I must and will see you and speak to you. Everybody in this 
house tries to avoid me. It seems as if I was not to get a 
straight answer from any one of you. But I will know all that 
is to be known about my lost wife. Do you hear, woman? I 
will know!” 

“I will come back to you directly, sir,” Barbara Simmons 
answered, quietly. 

The leaden calmness of this woman’s manner irritated Ed¬ 
ward Arundel beyond all power of expression. Before his 
Cousin Olivia’s gloomy coldness he - had been flung back upon 
himself as before an iceberg; but every now and then some sud¬ 
den glow of fiery emotion had shot up amidst the frigid mass, 
lurid and blazing, and that iceberg bad for a moment at least 
been transformed into an angry and passionate woman, who 
might in that moment of fierce emotion betray the dark secrets 
of her soul. But this woman’s manner presented a passive bar¬ 
rier, athwart which the young soldier was as powerless to pene¬ 
trate as he would have been to walk through a block of solid 
stone. 

Olivia was like some black and stony castle, whose barred 
windows bade defiance to the besieger, but behind whose nar¬ 
row casements transient flashes of light gleamed fitfully upon 
the watchers without, hinting at the mysteries that were hidden 
within the citadel. 

Barbara Simmons resembled a black stone wall, grimly con¬ 
fronting the eager traveler, and giving no indication of the un¬ 
known country on the other side. 

She came back almost immediately, after being only a few 
moments in Olivia’s room—certainly not long enough to con¬ 
sult with her mistress as to what she was to say or to leave un¬ 
said—and presented herself before Captain Arundel. 

*‘If you have any questions to ask, sir, about Miss March- 
mont, about your wife, I shall be happy to answer them,” she 
said. 

“I have a hundred questions to ask,” exclaimed the young 
man; “but first answer me this one plainly and truthfully. 
Where do you think my wife has gone? What do you think 
has become of her?” 

The woman was silent for a few moments, and then answered 
very gravely: 

“ I would rather not say what I think, sir.” 

“Why not?” 

“ Because I might say that which would make you unhappy.” 

“Can anvtbing be more miserable to me than the prevarica¬ 
tion which I meet with on every side?” cried Edward Arundel. 
“ If you or any one else will be straightforward with me—re¬ 
membering that I come to this place like a man who has risen 
from the grave, depending wholly on the word of others for the 
knowledge of that which is more vital to me than anything 
upon this earth—that person will be the best friend I have 


206 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


found since I rose from rav sick-bed to come hither. You can 
have no motive—if you are not in Paul Marchmont’s pay—for 
being cruel to my poor girl. Tell me the truth, then; speak, 
and speak fearlessly.” 

“ J have no reason to fear, sir,” answered Barbara Simmons, 
lifting her faded eves to the young man's eager face, with a 
gaze that seemed to say, “ I have done no wrong, and I do not 
shrink from justifying myself.” “ I have no reason to fear, sir; 
I was piously brought up and have tried my best always to do 
my duty in the state of life in which Providence has been 
pleased to place me. I have not had a particularly happy life, 
sir; for thirty years ago I lost all that made me happy; in them 
that loved me, and had a claim to love me. I have attached 
myself to my mistress; but it isn’t for me to expect a lady like her 
would stoop to make me more to her or nearer to her than I 
have a right to be as a servant.” 

There was no accent of hypocrisy or cant in any one of these 
deliberately spoken words. It seemed as if in this speech the 
woman had told the history of her life; a brief, unvarnished 
history of a barren life, out of which all love and sunlight had 
been early swept away, leaving behind a desolate blank that was 
not destined to be filled up by any affection from the young mis¬ 
tress so long and patiently served. 

“1 am faithful to my mistress, sir,” Barbara Simmons added, 
presently, “and I try my best to do my duty to her. I owe no 
duty to any one else.” 

“You owe a duty to humanity,” answered Edward Arundel. 
“ Woman, do you think duty is a thing to be measured by line 
and rule ? Christ came to save the lost sheep of the children of 
Israel; but was He less pitiful to the Canaanitish woman when 
she carried her sorrows to His feet ? You and your mistress 
have made hard precepts for yourselves, and have tried to live 
by them. You try to circumscribe the area of your Christian 
charity, and to do good within your limits. The traveler who 
fell among thieves would have died of his wounds for any help 
he might have had from you if he had lain beyond your radius. 
Have you yet to learn that Christianity is cosmopolitan, illimit¬ 
able, inexhaustible, subject to no laws of time or space? The 
duty you owe to your mistress is a duty that she buys and pays 
for—a matter of sordid barter, to be settled when you take your 
wages; the duty you owe to every miserable creature in your 
pathway is a sacred debt, to be accounted for to God.” 

As the young soldier spoke thus, carried away by his passion¬ 
ate agitation, suddenly eloquent by reason of the intensity of 
his feeling, a change came over Barbara’s face. There was no 
very palpable evidence of emotion in that stolid countenance; 
but across the wooden blankness of the woman’s face flittered a 
transient shadow, which was like the shadow of fear. 

“I tried to do my duty to Miss Marchmont as well as to my 
mistress,” she said, “ 3 waited on her faithfully while she was 
ill, I sat up with her six nights running, I didn’t take my 
clothes Gif for a week, Ther# are folks in the house who can 
Mi you as ■ 


207 


JOHN MARCH MONT’S LEGACY. 

“ Grod knows I am grateful to you, and will reward you for 
any pity you may have shown my poor darling,” the young man 
answered, in a more subdued tone; '‘only, if you pity me. and 
wish to help me, speak out, and speak plainly. What do you 
think has become of my lost girl?” 

“1 cannot tell you, sir. As God looks down upon me and 
judges me, I declare to you thatl know no more than you know. 
But I think——” 

“You think what?” 

“That you will never see Miss Marchmont again.” 

Edward Arundel started as violently as if of all sentences, this 
was the last he had expected to hear pronounced. His sanguine 
temperament, fresh in its vigorous and untainted youth, could 
not grasp the thought of despair. He could be mad with pas¬ 
sionate anger against the obstacles that separated him from his 
wife, but he could not believe those obstacles to be insurmount¬ 
able. He could not doubt the power of his own devotion and 
courage to bring him back his lost love. 

“ Never—see her—again!” 

He repeated these words as if they had belonged to a strange 
language and he were trying to make out their meaning. 

“ You think,” he gasped hoarsely, after a long pause—“ you 
think—that—she is—dead ?” 

“ I think that she went out of this house in a desperate state 
of mind. She was seen—not by me, for I should have thought 
it my duty to stop her if I had seen her so—she was seen by 
one of the servants crying and sobbing awfully as she went 
away upon that last afternoon.” 

“ And she was never seen again?” 

“ Never by me.” 

“And—you—you think she went out of this house with the 
intention of—of—destroying herself?” 

The words died away in a hoarse whisper, and it was by the 
motion of his white lips that Barbara Simmons perceived what 
the young man meant. 

“Ido, sir.” 

“ Have you any—particular reason for thinking so ?” 

“ No reason beyond what I have told you, sir.” 

Edward Arundel bent his head, and walked away to hide his 
blanched face. He tried instinctively to conceal his mental 
suffering, as he had sometimes hidden physical torture in an In¬ 
dian hospital, prompted by the involuntary impulse of a brave 
man. But though the woman’s words had come upon him like 
a thunder-bolt, he had no belief in the opinion they expressed. 
No; his young spirit wrestled against and rejected the awful 
conclusion. Other people might think what they chose; but be 
knew better than they. His wife was not dead. His life had 
been so smooth, so happy, so prosperous, so unclouded and suc¬ 
cessful, that it was scarcely strange he should be. skeptical of 
calamity —that his mind should be incapable of grasping the 
idea of a catastrophe so terrible as Mary’s suicide. 

“ She was intrusted to me by her father,” he thought “ She 
gave her foitb to mt huf <zm altar, • Shi. mtmm 


208 


JOHN MARCJIMONT'S LEGACY. 


ished body and soul; she cannot have gone down to destruction 
for want of my arm outstretched to save her. God is too good 
to permit such misery.” ; ' „ 

The young soldier’s piety was of the simplest and most un¬ 
questioning order, and involved an implict belief that a right- 
cause must always be ultimately victorious. With the same 
blind faith in which he had often muttered a hurried prayer 
before plunging in amidst the mad havoc of an Indian battle¬ 
field, confident that the justice of Heaven would never permit 
heathenish Afghans to triumph over Christian British gentle¬ 
men, he now believed that, in the darkest hour of Mary March- 
mont’s life, God’s arm had held her back from the dread ! orror 
—the unatonable offense—of self-destruction. 

“ I thank you for having spoken frankly to me,” be said to 
Barbara Simmons; “ I believe that you have spoken in good 
faith. But I do not think my darling is forever lost to me. I 
anticipate trouble and anxiety, disappointment, defeat, for a 
time—for a long time, perhaps; but I know that I shall find her 
in the end. The business of my life henceforth is to look for 
her.” 

Barbara’s dull eyes held earnest watch upon the young man’s 
countenance as he spoke. Anxiety, and even fear, were in that 
gaze, palpable to those who knew how to read the faint indica¬ 
tions of the woman’s stolid face. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE PARAGRAPH IN THE NEWSPAPER. 

Mr. Morrison brought the gig and pony to the western porch 
while Captain Arundel was talking to his cousin’s servant, and 
presently the invalid was being driven across the flat between 
the Towers and the high road to Kemberling. 

Mary’s old favorite. Farmer Pollard’s daughter, came out of a 
low rustic shop as the gig drew up before her husband’s door. 
This good-natured, tender-hearted Hester, advanced to matronly 
dignity under the name cf Mrs. Jobson, carried a baby in her 
arms, and wore a white dimity hood, that made a pent-house 
over her simple rosy face. But at the sight of Captain Arundel 
nearly all the rosy color disappeared from the country-woman’s 
plump cheeks, and she stared aghast at the unlooked-for visitor, 
almost ready to believe that, if anything so substantial as a 
pony and gig could belong to the spiritual world, it was the 
phantom only of the soldier that she looked upon. 

“ Oh, sir!” she said: ‘‘ oh, Captain Arundel, is it really you?” 

Edward alighted before Hester could recover from the surprise 
©ccasioned by his appearance. 

“ Yes, Mrs. Jobson,” he said. “ May I come into your house ? 
I wish to speak to you.” 

Hester courtesied, and stood aside to allow her visitor to pass 
her. Her manner was coldly respectful, and she looked at the 
young officer with a grave reproachful face, which was strange 
to him. She ushered her guest into a, parlor at the back of the 
shop—a prim apartment, splendid with varished mahogany, 


JOHN MARCHMONTS LEGACY. 


209 


shell-work boxes bought during Hester’s honeymoon trip to 
a Lincolnshire watering-place—and voluminous achievements 
in the way of crochet-work; a gorgeous and Sabbath-day cham¬ 
ber, looking across a stand of geraniums into a garden that was 
orderly and trimly kept even in this dull November weather. 

Mrs. Jobson drew forward an uneasy easy-chair, covered with 
horse-hair, and veiled by a crochet-work representation of a 
peacock embowered among roses, She offered this luxurious 
seat to Captain Arundel, who, in his weakness, was well content 
to sink down upon the slippery cushions. 

“I have come here to ask you to help me in my search for 
my wife, Hester,” Edward Arundel said, in a scarcely audible 
voice. 

It is not given to the bravest mind to be utterly independent 
and defiant of the body; and the soldier was beginning to feel 
that he had very nearly run the length of his tether, and 
must soon submit himself to be prostrated by sheer physical 
weakness. 

“Your wife!” cried Hester, eagerly. “Oh, sir, is that true?” 

“Is what true?” 

“That poor Miss Mary was your lawful wedded wife?” 

“She was,” replied Edward Arundel, sternly, “my true 
and lawful wife! What else should she have been, Mrs. Job- 
son ?” 

The farmer’s daughter burst into tears. 

“ Oh, sir,” she said, sobbing violently as she spoke—“ oh, sir, 
the things that was said against that poor dear in this place and 
all about the Towers! The things that was said! It makes my 
heart bleed to think of them; it makes my heart ready to break 
when I think what my poor sweet young lady must have suf¬ 
fered. And it set me against you, sir; and I thought you was a 
bad and cruel-hearted man!” 

“What did they say ?” cried Edward; “what did they dare 
to say against her or against me ?” 

“ They said that you had enticed her away from her home, 
sir, and "that—that—there had been no marriage; and that you’d 
deserted her afterward, and the railway accident had come upon 
you as a punishment like; and that Mrs. Marchmont had found 
poor Miss Mary all alone at a country inn, and had brought her 
back to the Towers.” 

“ But what if people did say this ?” exclaimed Captain Arun¬ 
del. “You could have contradicted their foul slanders. 
You could have spoken in defense of mv poor helpless 
girl.” 

“ Me, sir!” 

“Yes. You must have heard the truth from my wife’s own 
lips.” 

Hester Jobson burst into a new flood of tears as Edward 
Arundel said this. 

“ Oh, no, sir,” she sobbed; “that was the most cruel thing of 
all. I never could get to see Miss Mary; they wouldn’t let me 
see her.” 

Who wouldn’t let you ?” 


210 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


“ Mrs. Marchmonfc and Mr. Paul Marchmont. I was laid 
up, sir, when the report first spread about that Miss Mary had 
come home. Things was kept very secret, and it was said that 
Mrs. Marchmont was dreadfully cutup by the disgrace that had 
come upon her step-daughter. My baby was born about that 
time, sir; but as soon as ever I could get about I went up to the 
Towers, in the hope of seeing ray poor dear miss. But Mrs. 
Simmons, Mrs. Marchraont’s own maid, told me that Miss Mary 
was ill, very ill, and that no one was allowed to see her except 
those that waited upon her and that she was used to. And I 
begged and prayed that I might be allowed to see her, sir, with 
the tears in my eyes; for my heart bled for her, poor darling 
dear, when I thought of the cruel things that were said against 
her, and thought that, with all her riches and her learning, 
folks could dare to talk of her as they wouldn’t dare to talk of 
a poor man’s wife like me. And I went again and again, sir; 
but it was no good; and, the last time I went, Mrs. Marchmont 
came out into the hall to me, and told me that I was intrusive 
and impertinent, and that it was me, and such as me, as had 
set all manner of scandal afloat about her step-daughter. But 
I went again, sir, even after that, and I saw Mr. Paul March¬ 
mont, and he was very kind to me, and frank and free-spoken 
—almost like you, sir; and he told me that Mrs. Marchmont was 
rather stern and unforgiving toward the poor young lady—he 
spoke very kind and pitiful of poor Miss Mary—and that he 
would stand my friend, and he’d contrive that I should see my 
poor dear as soon as ever she picked up her spirits a bit, and was 
more fit to see me, and I was to come again in a week’s time, 
he said.” 

“ Well, and when you went-” 

“ When I went, sir,” sobbed the carpenter’s wife, “ it was the 
18th of October, and Miss Mary had run away upon the day be¬ 
fore, and everybody at the Towers was being sent right and left 
to look for her. I saw Mrs. Marchmont for a minute that after¬ 
noon, and she was as white as a sheet, and all of a tremble 
from head to foot, and she walked about the place as if she was 
out of her mind like.” 

“Guilt,” thought the young soldier; “guilt of some sort. 
God only knows what that guilt has been.” 

He covered his face with his hands, and waited to hear what 
more Hester Jobson had to tell him. There was no need of 
questioning here; no reservation or prevarication. With almost 
as tender regret as he himself could have felt, the carpenter’s 
wife told him all that she knew of the sad story of Mary's dis¬ 
appearance. 

“ Nobody took much notice of me, sir, in the confusion of 
the place,” Mrs. Jobson continued; “ and there is a parlor-maid 
at the Towers called Susan Rose, that had been a school-fellow 
with me ten years before, and I got her to tell me all about it. 
And she said that poor clear Miss Mary had been weak and ail¬ 
ing ever since she had recovered from the brain-fever, and that 
she had shut herself up in her room, and had seen no one except 
Mrs. Marchmont and Barbara Simmons; but on the seventeenth 


JOHN MARCHMONT'8 LEGACY. 


211 


Mrs. Marchmont sent for her, asking her to come to the study. 
And the poor young lady went; and then Susan Rose thinks 
that there was high words between Mrs. Marchmont and her 
step-daughter, for as Susan was crossing the hall, poor miss 
came out of the study, and her face was all smothered in tears, 
and she cried out, as she came into the hall, ‘ I can’t bear it auy 
longer. My life is too miserable; my fate is too wretched!’ And 
then she ran up-stairs, and Susan Rose followed up to her room 
and listened outside the door; and she heard the poor dear sob¬ 
bing and crying out again and again, ‘Oh, papa, papa! If you 
knew what I suffer! Oh, papa, papa, papa!’—so pitiful, that if 
Susan Rose had dared she would have gone in to try and com¬ 
fort her; but Miss Mary had always been very reserved to all 
tbe servants, and Susan didn’t dare intrude upon her. It was 
late that evening when my poor young lady was missed, and 
the servants sent out to look for her.” 

“And you, Hester—you knew my wife better than any of 
these people—where do you think she went?” 

Hester Jobson looked piteously at the questioner. 

“ Oh, sir,” she cried! “ oh, Captain Arundel, don’t ask me; 
pray, pray, don’t ask me!” 

“ You think like these other people—you think that she went 
away to destroy herself?” 

“ Oh, sir, what can I think, what can I think except that ? 
She was last seen down by the water-side, and one of her shoes 
was picked up among the rushes; and for all there’s been such a 
search made after her, and a reward offered, and advertisements 
in the papers, and everything done that mortal could do to find 
her, and no news of her, sir—not a trace to tell of her being liv¬ 
ing; not a creature to come forward and speak to her being seen 
by them after that day. What can I think, sir, what can 1 
think, except that-” 

“ Except that she threw herself into the river at the back of 
Marchmont Towers.” 

“I’ve tried to think different, sir; I’ve tried to hope I should 
see that poor sweet lamb again; but I can’t, I can’t. I’ve worn 
mourning for the last three Sundays, sir; for I seemed to feel as 
if it was a sin and a disrespectfulness toward her to wear colors, 
and sit in the church where I have seen her so often, looking so 
meek and beautiful. Sunday after Sunday.” 

Edward Arundel bowed his head upou his hands and wept 
silently. This woman’s belief in Mary’s death afflicted him 
more than he dared confess to himself. He had defied Olivia 
and Paul Marchmont, as enemies, who tried to force a false con¬ 
viction upon him; but he could neither doubt nor defy this hon¬ 
est, warm-hearted creature, who wept aloud over the memory 
of his wife’s sorrows. He could not doubt her sincerity; but he 
still refused to accept the belief which on every side was pressed 
upon him. He still refused to think that his wife was dead. 

“ The river was dragged for more than a week,” he said, pres¬ 
ently, “and my wife’s body was never found.” 

Hester Jobson shook her head mournfully. 

“ That’s a poor sign, sir,” she answered; “the river’s full of 


212 


JOHN MARCH MONT *8 LEGACY. 


holes, I’ve heard say. My husband had a fellow-’prentice who 
drowned himself in that river seven years ago, and his body 
was never found.” 

Edward Arundel rose and walked toward the door. 

“ I do not believe that my wife is dead,” he cried. He held 
out his hand to the carpenter’s wife. “ God bless you,” he said. 
“ I thank you from my heart for your tender feeling toward my 
lost girl. ” 

He went out to the gig, in which Mr. Morrison waited for him, 
rather tired of his morning’s work. 

“ There is an inn a little way further along the street, Morri¬ 
son,” Captain Arundel said. “I shall stop there.” 

The man stared at his master. 

“ And not go back to Marchmont Towers, Mr. Edward ?” 
“No” 

******* 

Edward Arundel had held nature in abeyance for more than 
four-and-twenty hours, and this outraged nature now took her 
revenge by flinging the young man prostrate and powerless 
upon his bed at the simple Kemberling hostelry, and holding 
him prisoner there for three dreary days; three miserable days, 
with long, dark, interminable evenings, during which, {he 
invalid had no better employment than to lie brooding over his 
sorrows, while Mr. Morrison read the Tunes newspaper, in a 
monotonous and droning voice for his master’s entertainment. 

How that helpless and prostrate prisoner, bound hand and 
foot in the stern grasp of retaliative nature, loathed the leading 
articles, the foreign correspondence, in the leviathan journal! 
How he sickened at the fiery English of Printing-House Square, 
as expounded by Mr. Morrison! The sound of the valet’s voice 
was like the unbroken flow of a dull river. The great names that 
surged up every now and then upon that sullen tide of oratory 
made no impression upon the sick man’s mind. What was it to 
him if the glory of England were in danger, the freedom of a 
mighty people wavering in the balance? What was it to him 
if famine-stricken Ireland were perishing, and the far-away 
Indian possessions menaced by contumacious and treacherous 
Sikhs? What was it to him if the heavens were shriveled like 
a blazing scroll, and the earth reeling on its shaken founda¬ 
tions? What had he to do with any catastrophe except tnat 
which had fgllen upon his innocent young wife? 

“ Oh, my broken trust!” he muttered sometimes, to the alarm 
of the confidential servant; “Oh, my broken trust!” 

But during the three days in which Captain Arundel lav in 
the best chamber at the Black Bull—the chief inn of Kember¬ 
ling, and a very splendid place of public entertainment long 
ago, when all the northward-bound coaches had passed through 
that quiet Lincolnshire village—he was not without a medical 
attendant to give him some feeble help in the way of drugs and 
doctor’s stuff, in the battle which he was fighting with offended 
nature. I don’t know but what the help, however well in¬ 
tended, may have gone rather to strengthen the hand of the 
enemy; for in those days—the year ’18 is very long ago when we 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


2 IB 


take the measure of time by science—country practitioners were 
apt to place themselves upon the side of the disease rather than 
of the patient, and to assist grim Death in his siege, by lending 
the professional aid of purgatives and phlebotomy. 

On this principle, Mr. George Weston, the surgeon of Kern- 
berling, and the submissive and well-tutored husband of Paul 
Marchmont’s sister, would fain have set to work with the pros¬ 
trate soldier, on the plea that the patient’s skin was hot and 
dry, and his white lips parched with fever. 

But Captain Arundel protested vehemently against any such 
treatment. 

“ You shall not take an ounce of blood out of my veins,” he 
said, “ or give me one drop of medicine that will weaken me. 
What I want is strength; strength to get up and leave this 
intolerable room, and go about the business that I have to do. 
As to fever,” he added, scornfully, “ as long as I have to lie 
here and am hindered from going about the business of my life, 
every drop of my blood will boil with a fever that all the drugs 
in Apothecaries’ Hall would have no power to subdue. Give 
me something to strengthen me. Patch me up somehow or 
other, Mr. Weston, if j^ou can. But I warn you that, if you 
keep me long here, I shall leave this place either a corpse or a 
madman.” 

The surgeon, drinking tea with hie wife and brother-in-law 
half an hour afterward, related the conversation that had taken 
place between himself and his patient, breaking up his narra¬ 
tive with a great many “ I saids” and “said he’s,” and with a 
good deal of rambling commentary upon the text. 

Lavinia Weston looked at her brother while the surgeon told 
his story. 

“He is very desperate about his wife, then, this dashing 
voung captain?” Mr. Marchmont said, presently. 

“ Awful,” answered the surgeon; “ regular awful. I never 
saw anything like it. Really it was enough to cut a man up to 
hear him go on so. He asked me all sorts of questions about the 
time when she was ill and I attended upon her, aud what did 
she sav to me, and did she seem very unhappy, and all that sort 
of thing. Upon my word, you know, Mr. Paul—of course I’m 
very glad to think of your coming into the fortune, and I’m 
very much obliged to you for the kind promises you’ve made to 
me and Lavinia; but I almost felt as if I could have wished the 
poor young lady hadn't drowned herself.” 

Mrs. Weston shrugged her shoulders, and looked at her 
brother. 

“ Imbecile!” she muttered. 

She was accustomed to talk to her brother very freely, in 
rather school*girl French before her husband, to whom that 
language was as the most recondite of tongues, and who heart¬ 
ily admired her for superior knowledge. 

He sat staring at her now, and eating bread-and-butter with 
a simple relish, which in itself was enough to mark him out as 

a man to be trampled upon. 

* * r * * * * * 


214 


JOHN MARC JIM ONT ’S LEGACY. 


On the fourth day after his interview with Hester, Edward 
Arundel was strong enough to leave his chamber at the Black 
Bull. 

“ I shall go to London by to-night’s mail, Morrison,” he said 
to his servant; “ but before I leave Lincolnshire, I must pay an¬ 
other visit to March moot Towers. You can stop here, and pack 
my portmanteau while I go.” K-- 

A rumbling old fly—looked upon as a splendid equipage by the 
inhabitants of Kemberling—was furnished for Captain Arundel’s 
accommodation by the proprietor of the Black Bull, and once 
more the soldier approached that ill-omened d welling [dace 
which had been the home of his wife. 

He was ushered without any delay to the study in which 
Olivia spent the greater part of her time. 

The dusky afternoon was already closing in. A low fire 
burned in the old-fashioned grate, and one lighted w x-candle 
stood upon an open davenport, at which the widow sat amidst 
a confusion of tom papers cast upon the ground about her. 

The open drawers of the davenport, the little scraps of paper 
and loosely tied documents, thrust, without any show of order, 
into the different compartments of the desk, bore testimony to 
that state of mental distraction which had been common to 
Olivia Marchmont for some time past. She herself, the gloomy 
tenant of the Towers, sat with her elbows resting on her desk, 
looking hopelessly and absently at the confusion before her. 

“ I am very tired,” she said, with a sigh, as she motioned her 
cousin to a chair. “ I have been trying to sort my papers, and 
to look for bills that have to be paid, and receipts. They come 
to me about everything. I am very tired.” 

Her manner was changed from that stern defiance with which 
she had last confronted her kinsman to an air of almost piteous 
feebleness. She rested her head on her hand, repeating, in a 
low voice: 

“Yes, I am very tired.” 

Edward Arundel looked earnestly at her faded face, so faded 
from that which be remembered it in its proud young beauty, 
that, in spite of his doubt of this woman, he could scarcely re¬ 
frain from some touch of pity for her. 

“ You are ill, Olivia,” he said. 

“ Yes, I am ill; I am worn out; I am tired of my life. Why 
does not God have pity upon me, and take the bitter burden 
away ? I have carried it too.long.” 

She said this not so much to her cousin as to herself. She 
was like Job in his despair, and cried aloud to the Supreme Him¬ 
self in a gloomy protest against her anguish. 

“ Olivia,” said Edward Arundel very earnestly, “ what is it 
that makes you unhappy ? Is the burden that you carry a bur¬ 
den on your conscience? Is the black shadow upon your life a 
guilty secret? Is the cause of your unhappiness that which I 
suspect it to be? Is it that, in some hour of passion, you con¬ 
sented to league yourself with Paul Marchmont against my poor 
innocent girl? For pity’s sake speak, and undo what you have 
done. You cannot have been guilty of a crime. There has been 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


215 


some foul play, some conspiracy, some suppression; and my dar¬ 
ling has been lured away by the machinations of this man. But 
he could not have got her into his power without your help. You 
hated her—Heaven alone knows for what reason—and in an evil 
hour you helped him, and now you are sorry for what you have 
done. But it is not too late, Olivia; Olivia, it surely is not too late. 
Speak, speak, woman, and undo what you have done. As you hope 
for mercy and forgiveness from God, undo what you have done. I 
will exact no atonement from you. Paul Marchmout, this 
smooth traitor, this frank man of the world, who defied me with 
a smile—he only shall be called upon to answer for the sin done 
against my darling. Speak, Olivia, for pity’s sake,” cried the 
young man, casting himself upon his knees at his cousin’s feet. 

“ You are of my own blood; you must have some spark of re¬ 
gard for me; have compassion upon me, then, or have compas¬ 
sion upon your own guilty soul, which must perish everlastingly 
if you withhold the truth. Have pity, Olivia, and speak!” 

The widow had risen to her feet, recoiling from the soldier as 
he knelt before her, and looking at him with an awful light in 
the eyes that alone gave light to her corpse-like face. 

Suddenly she flung her arms up above her head, stretching her 
wasted hands toward the ceiling. 

“By the God who has renounced and abandoned me,” she 
cried, “ I have no more knowledge than you have of Mary March- 
mont’s fate. From the hour in which she left this house, upon 
the 17th of October, until this present moment, I have neither 
seen her nor heard of her. If I have lied to you, Edward Arun¬ 
del,” she added, dropping her extended arms, and turning 
quietly to her cousin—“ if I have lied to you in saying this, 
may the tortures which I suffer be doubled to me—if in the in¬ 
finite of suffering there is any anguish worse than that I now 
endure.” 

Edward Arundel paused for a little while, brooding over this 
strange reply to his appeal. Could he disbelieve his cousin? 

It is common to some people to make forcible and impious as 
severations of an untruth shamelessly, in the very face of an in¬ 
sulted Heaven. But Olivia Marchmont was a woman who, in 
the very darkest hour of her despair, knew no wavering from 
her faith in the God she had offended. 

“I cannot refuse to believe you, Olivia,” Captain Arundel 
said, presently. “I do believe in your solemn protestations, 
and I no longer look for help from you in my search for my lost 
love. I absolve vou from all suspicion of being aware of her 
fate after she left this house. But so long as she remained be¬ 
neath this roof she was in your care, and I hold you responsible 
for the ills that may have then befallen her. You, Olivia, must 
have had some hand in driving that unhappy girl away from 
her home.” 

The widow had resumed her seat by the open davenport. She 
sat with her head bent, her brows contracted, her mouth fixed 
and rigid, her left hand trifling absently witli the scattered pa¬ 
pers before her. 


JOHN MARCHMONT S LEGACY. 


216 

“You accused me of this once before, when Mary Marchmon 
left this house,” she said, sullenly. 

“ And you were guilty then,” answered Edward. 

“I cannot hold mvself answerable for the actions of others. 
Mary Marchmont left this time as she left before, of her own 
free will.” 

“ Driven away by your cruel words.” 

“She must have been very weak,” answered Olivia, with a 
sneer, “ if a few harsh words were enough to drive her away 
from her own house.” 

“You deny, then, that you were guilty of causing this poor 
deluded child’s flight from this house ?” 

Olivia Marchmont sat for some moments in moody silence; 
then suddenly raising her head, she looked her cousin full in the 
face. 

“ I do,” she exclaimed; “if anyone except herself is guilty 
of an act which was her own, I am not that person.” 

“I understand,” said Edward Arundel; “it was Paul March- 
mont’s hand that drove her out upon the dreary world. It was 
Paul Marchmont’s brain that plotted against her. You were 
only a minor instrument, a willing tool in the hands of a subtle 
villain. But he shall answer; he shall answer!” 

The soldier spoke the last words between bis clinched teeth. 
Then, with his chin upon his^reast, he sat thinking over what 
he had just heard. 

“How was it?” he muttered; “how was it? He is too con¬ 
summate a villain to use violence. His manner the other morn¬ 
ing told me that the law was on bis side. He had done nothing 
to put himself into my power, and he defied me. How was it, 
then? By what means did he drive my darling to her despair¬ 
ing flight ?” 

As Captain Arundel sat thinking of these things his cousin’s 
idle fingers still trifled with the papers on the desk; while, with 
her chin resting on her other hand, and her eyes fixed upon the 
wall before her, she stared blankly at the reflection of the flame 
of the candle on the polished oaken panel. Her idle fingers fol¬ 
lowing no design, strayed here and there among the scattered 
papers, until a few that lay nearest the edge of the desk slid off 
the smooth morocco, and fluttered to the floor. 

Edward Arundel, as absent-minded as his cousin, stooped in¬ 
voluntarily to pick up the papers. The uppermost of those that 
had fallen was a slip cut from a country newspaper, to which 
was pinned an open letter, a few lines only. The paragraph in 
the newspaper slip was marked by double ink-lines, drawn round 
it by a neat penman. Again, almost involuntarily, Edward 
Arundel looked at this marked paragraph. It was very brief: 

“ We regret to be called upon to state that another of the 
sufferers in the accident which occurred last August on the 
Southwestern Railway has expired from injuries received upon 
that occasion. Captain Arundel, of the H. E. I. C. S., died on 
Friday night at Dangerfield Park, Devon, the seat of his elder 
brother.” 


217 


JOHN MARCHMONT\S LEGACY. 

The letter was almost as brief as the paragraph: 

“ Kembbrling, Oct. 17. 

“ My dear Mrs. Marchmont,— The inclosed has just come to 
hand. Let us hope that it is not true. But. in case of the 
worst, it should be shown to Miss Marchmont immediately. 
Better that she should hear the news from you than from a 
stranger. 

“ Yours sincerely, 

“Paul Marchmont.” 

“ I understand everything now,” said Edward Arundel, lay¬ 
ing these two papers before his cousin; “it was with this printed 
lie that you and Paul Marchmont drove my wife to despair— 
perhaps to death. My darling, my darling,” cried the young 
man, in a burst of uncontrollable agony, “ 1 refused to believe 
that you were dead; I refused to believe that you were lost to 
me. I can believe it now! I can believe it now!” 


CHAPTER XXV. 

EDWARD ARUNDEL’S DESPAIR. 

Yes; Edward Arundel could believe the worst now. He 
could believe now that his young wife, on hearing tidings of 
his death, h§d rushed madly to her own destruction; too deso- 
late, too utterly unfriended and miserable, to live under the 
burden of her sorrows. 

Mary had talked to her husband in the happy, loving confi¬ 
dence of her bright honeymoon; she had talked to him of her 
father’s death, and the horrible grief she had felt; the heart- 
sickness, the eager yearning to be carried to the same grave, to 
rest in the same silent sleep. 

“ I think I tried to throw myself from the window’ upon the 
night before papa’s funeral,” she had said; “ but I fainted away. 
I know it was very wicked of me. But I was mad. My wretch¬ 
edness had driven me mad.” 

He remembered this. Might not this girl, this helpless child, 
in the first desperation of her grief, have hurried down to that 
dismal river, to hide her sorrows forever under its slow and 
murky tide ? 

Henceforward it was with a new feeling that Edward Arun¬ 
del looked for his missing wife. The young and hopeful spirit 
w 7 hich had wrestled against conviction, which had stubbornly 
preserved its own sanguine fancies against the gloomy forebod¬ 
ings of others, had broken down before the evidence of that 
false paragraph in the country newspaper. That paragraph 
was the key to the sad mystery of Mary Arundel’s disappear¬ 
ance. Her husband could understand now why she ran away; 
w’hy she despaired; and how in that desperation and despair, 
she might have hastily ended her short life. 

It was with altered feelings, therefore, that he went forth to 
look for her. He was no longer passionate and impatient, for 
he no longer believed that his young wife lived to yearn for his 
coming, find to suffer for the want of his protection; he no 



218 JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

longer thought of her as a lonely and helpless wanderer driven 
from her rightful home, and in her childish ignorance straying 
further and further away from him who had the right to succor 
and to comfort her. No; he thought of her now with sullen 
despair at his heart; he thought of her now in utter hopeless¬ 
ness; he thought of her with a bitter and agonizing regret, that 
was almost too terrible for endurance. 

But this grief was not the only feeling that held possession of 
the young soldier’s breast. Stronger even than his sorrow was 
his eager yearning for vengeance, his savage desire of retalia- 
tion, 

“ I look upon Paul Marchmont as the murderer of my wife, 
he said to Olivia, on that November evening on which he saw 
the paragraph in the newspaper; “I look upon that man as the 
deliberate destroyer of a helpless girl and he shall answer to me 
for her life. He shall answer to me for every pang she suffered, 
for every tear she shed. God have mercy upon her poor erring 
soul, and help me to my vengeance upon her destroyer.” 

He lifted his eyes to heaven as he spoke, and a solemn shadow 
overspread his face, like a dark cloud upon a winter landscape. 

I have said that Edward Arundel no longer felt a frantic im¬ 
patience to discover his wife’s fate. The sorrowful conviction 
which at last had forced itself upon him left no room for im¬ 
patience. The pale face he had loved was lying hidden some¬ 
where beneath those dismal waters. He had no doubt of that. 
There was no need of any other solution to the mystery of his 
wife’s disappearance. That which he had to seek for was the 
evidence of Paul Marchmont’s guilt. 

The outspoken young soldier, whose nature was as transparent 
as the stainless soul of a child, had to enter into the lists with a 
man who was so different to himself, that it was almost difficult 
to believe that the two individuals belonged to the same species. 

Captain Arundel went back to London, and betook himself 
forthwith to the office of Messrs. Paulette, Paulette & Matthew- 
son. He had the idea, common to many of his class, that all 
lawyers, whatever claims they might have to respectability, 
were in a manner past-masters in every villainous art, and, as 
such, the proper people to deal with a villain. 

“ Richard Paulette will be able to help me,” thought the young 
man; “Richard Paulette saw through Paul Marchmont, I dare 
say.” 

But Richard Paulette had very little to say about the matter. 
He had known Edward Arundel’s father, and he had known the 
young soldier from his early boyhood, and he seemed deeply 
grieved to witness his client’s distress; but he had nothing to 
say against Paul Marchmont. 

“I cannot see what right you have to suspect Mr. Marchmont 
of any guilty share in your wife’s disappearance,” he said, 
“Do not think I defend him because he is our client. You 
know that we are rich enough and honorable enough to refuse 
the business of any man whom we thought a villain. When I 
was in Lincolnshire, Mr. Marchmont did everything that a man 
could do to testify his anxiety to find his cousin.” 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY . 


2I»» 

“Oh, yes,” Edward Arundel answered, bitterly; “that is 
only consistent with the man’s diabolical artifice; that was a 
part of his scheme. He wished to testify that anxiety, and he 
wanted you as a witness to his conscientious search after my 
—poor—lost girl.” His voice and manner changed for a moment 
as he spoke of Mary. 

Richard Paulette shook his head. 

“Prejudice, prejudice, my dear Arundel,” he said; “this is 
all prejudice upon your part, I assure you. Mr. Marchmont 
behaved with perfect honesty and candor. ‘ I won’t tell you 
that I’m sorry to inherit this fortune,’ he said, ‘because if I did 
you wouldn’t believe me—what man in bis senses could believe 
that a poor devil of a landscape-painter would regret coming 
into eleven thousand a year ?—but 1 am very sorry for this poor 
little girl’s unhappy fate.’ And I believe,” added Mr. Paulette, 
decisively, “ that the man was heartily sorry.” 

Edward Arundel groaned aloud. 

“ O Godl this is too terrible,” he muttered. “ Everybody will 
believe in this man rather than in me. How am I to be avenged 
upon the wretch who caused my darling’s death?” 

He talked for a long time to the lawyer, but with no result. 
Richard Paulette set down the young man’s hatred of Paul 
Marchmont as a natural consequence of his grief for Mary’s 
death. 

“I can’t wonder that you are prejudiced against Mr. March¬ 
mont,” he said; “ it’s natural, it’s only natural; but believe me. 
you are wrong. Nothing could be more straightforward, and 
even delicate, than his conduct. He refuses to take possession 
of the estate, or to touch a farthing of the rents. ‘ No,’ he said, 
when I suggested to him that he had a right to enter in posses¬ 
sion—< no; we will not shut the door against hope. My cousin 
may be hiding herself somewhere; she may return by and by. 
Let us wait a twelvemonth. If, at the end of that time she does 
not return, and if in the interim we receive no tidings from her, 
no evidence of her existence, we may reasonably conclude that 
she is dead; and 1 may fairly consider myself the rightful owner 
of Marchmont Towers. In the meantime, you will act as if you 
were acting as Mary Marchmont’s agent, holding all moneys as 
in trust for her, but to be delivered up to me at the expiration of 
a year from the day on which she disappeared.’ I do not think 
anything could be more straightforward than that,” added 
Richard Paulette, in conclusion. 

“ No,” Edward answered, with a sigh; “ it seems very straight¬ 
forward. But the man who could strike at a helpless girl by 
means of a lying paragraph in a newspaper-” 

“ Mr. Marchmont may have believed in that paragraph.” 

Edward Arundel arose with a gesture of impatience. 

“ I came to you for help, Mr. Paulette,” he said; “ but I see 
you don’t mean to help me. Good-day.” 

He left the office before the lawyer could remonstrate with 
him. He walked away, with passionate anger against all the 
world raging in his breast. 

“Why, what a smooth-spoken, false-tongued world it is{ he 


2m JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY . 

thought. “Let a man succeed in the vilest scheme, and no lin¬ 
ing creature will care to ask by what foul means he may have 
won his success. What weapons can I use against this Paul 
Marchmont. who twists truth and honesty to his own ends, and 
masks his basest treachery under an appearance of candor?” 

From Lincoln’s-Inn Fields Captain Arundel drove over Water 
loo Bridge to Oakley Street. He went to Mrs. Pimpernel's es¬ 
tablishment, without any hope of the glad surprise that had met 
him there a few months before. He believed implicitly that his 
wife was dead, and wherever he went in search of her he went 
in utter hopelessness, only prompted by the desire to leave no 
part of his duty undone. 

The honest-hearted dealer in cast-off apparel wept bitterly 
when she heard how sadJv the captain’s honeymoon had ended. 
She would have been content to detain the young soldier all day 
while she bemoaned the misfortunes that had come upon him; 
and now for the first time Edward heard of dismal forebodings, 
and horrible dreams, and unaccountable presentiments of evil, 
with which this honest woman had been afflicted on and before 
his wedding-day, and of which she had made special mention at 
the time to divers friends and acquaintances. 

“ I never shall forget how shivery like I felt as the cab drove 
off, with that poor dear a-lookin’ and smilin’ at me out of the 
window. I says to Mrs. Poison, as her husband is in the shoe- 
makin’ line two doors further down—I says, ‘ I do hope Capting 
Harungdell’s lady will get safe to the end of her journey.’ I felt 
the cold shivers a-creepin’ up my back just exjackly like 1 did a 
fortnight before my pore Jane died, and I couldn’t but think as 
somethink sarious was goin’ to happen.” 

From London Captain Arundel went to Winchester, much to 
the disgust of his valet, who was accustomed to a luxuriously 
idle life at Dangerfieid Park, and who did not by any means 
relish this desultory wandering from place to place. Perhaps 
there was some faint ray of hope in the young man’s mind as 
he drew near to that little village inn beneath whose shelter he 
. had been so happy with bis childish bride. If she had not com¬ 
mitted suicid.; if she had indeed wandered away to try and 
bear her sorrows in gentle Christian resignation; if she had 
sought some retreat where she might be safe from her 
tormentors—would not every instinct of her loving heart have 
led her here?—here, amidst these low meadows and winding 
streams, guarded and surrounded by the pleasant shelter of 
grassy hill-tops, crowned by waving trees?—here, where she had 
been so happy with the husband of her choice ? 

But, alas, that newly-born hope, which had made the soldier’s 
heart beat and his cheek flush, was as delusive as many other 
hopes that lure men and women onward in their dreary wan¬ 
derings upon this earth. The landlord of the White Haft Inn 
answered Edward Arundel’s question with stolid indifference. 

No; the young lady had gone away with her rna, and a gen¬ 
tleman who had come with her ma. She had cried a deal, poor 
thing, and had seemed very much cut up. (It was from the 
chamber-maid Edward heaVd this.) But her ma and the gentle- 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY . 221 

man had seemed in a great hurry to take her away. The gen¬ 
tleman said that a village-inn wasn’t the place for her, and he 
said he was very much shocked to find her there; and he had a 
fly got, and took the two ladies away in it to the George, at 
Winchester, and they were to go from there to London; and the 
young lady was crying when she went away, and as pale as 
death, poor dear. 

This was all that Captain Aruniel gained by his journey to 
Milldale. He went across country to the farming people near 
Reading,' his w ife’s poor relatives. But they had heard nothing 
of her. They had wondered, indeed, at having no letters from 
her; for she had been very kind to them. They w^ere terribly 
distressed when they heard of her disappearance. 

This was the forlorn hope. It was all over now. Edward 
Arundel could no longer struggle against the cruel truth. He 
could do nothing now but avenge his wife’s sorrow’s. He went 
down to Devonshire, saw his mother, and told her the sad story 
of Mary’s flight. But he could not rest at Dangerfield, though 
Mrs. Arundel implored him to stay long enough to recruit his 
shattered health. He hurried back to London, made arrange¬ 
ments with his agent for the purchase of his captaincy among 
his brother officers, and tn j n, turning his back upon the career 
that had been far dearer to him than his life, he went down to 
Lincolnshire once more in the dreary winter weather, to watch 
and wait patiently, if need were, for the day of retribution. 

There was a detached cottage, a lonely place enough, between 
Kimberling and Marcbmont IVnvers, that had been to let for a 
long time, being very much out of repair, and by no means in¬ 
viting in appearance. Edward Arundel took this cottage. All 
necessary repairs and alterations w-ere executed under the direc¬ 
tion of Mr. Morrison, who was to remain permanently in the 
young man’s service. Captain Arundel had a couple of horses 
brought dow n to his new stable, and hired a country lad, who 
was to act as groom under the eye of the factotum. - Mr. Mor¬ 
rison and this lad, with one female servant, formed Edward’s 
establishment. 

Paul Marchmont lifted his auburn eyebrows wdien he heard of 
the new tenant of Kemberling Retreat. The lonely cottage had 
been christened Kemberling Retreat by a sentimental tenant, 
w ho had ultimately levanted with his rent three-quarters in ar- 
rear. The artist exhibited a gentlemanly surprise at this new 
vagary of Edward Arundel’s, and publicly expressed his pity 
for the foolish young man. 

“ I am so sorry that the poor fellow should sacrifice himself 
to a romantic grief for my unfortunate cousin,” Mr. Marchmont 
said, in the parlor of the Black Bull, where he condescended to 
drop in now and then with his brother in-lavv, and to make him¬ 
self popular among the magnates of Kemberling and the tenant 
farmers, w’ho looked to him as their future, if not their actual 
landlord. “I am really sorry for the poor lad. He’s a hand¬ 
some, high-spirited fellow’, and I’m sorry he’s been so weak as 
to ruin his prospects in the Compauy’s service. Yes; I am 
heartily sorry for him.” 


JOt-iN MARCHMONT’S legacy. 


Mr. Marchmont discussed the matter very lightly in the parlor 
of the Black Bull; but he kept silence as he walked home with 
the surgeon; and Mr. George Weston, looking askance at bis 
brother-in-law’s face, saw that something was wrong, and 
thought it advisable to hold his peace. 

Paul Marchmont sat up late that night talking to his sister 
after the surgeon had gone to bed. The brother and sister con¬ 
versed in subdued murmurs as they stood close together before 
the expiring fire, and the faces of both were very grave, almost 
apprehensive. 

“ He must be terribly in earnest,” Paul Marchmont said, “ or 
he would never have sacrificed his position. He has planted 
himself here, close upon us, with a determination of watching 
us. We shall have to be very careful.” 

******* 

It was early in the new year that Edward Arundel completed 
all his arrangements, and took possession of Kemberling Retreat. 
He knew that, in retiring from the East India Company’s serv¬ 
ice, he had sacrificed the prospect of a brilliant and glorious 
career, under some of the finest soldiers who ever fought for 
their country. But he bad made this sacrifice willingly—as an 
offering to the memory of his lost love; as an atonement for his 
broken trust. For it was one of his most bitter miseries to re¬ 
member that his own want of prudence had been the first cause 
of all Mary’s sorrows. Had he confided in his mother—had he 
induced her to return from Germany to be present at his mar¬ 
riage, and to accept the orphan girl as a daughter—Mary need_ 
never again have fallen into the power of Olivia Marchmont. 
His own imprudence, his own rashness, had flung his poor child, 
helpless and friendless, into the hands of the very man against 
whom John Marchmont had written a solemn warning—a 
warning that it would have been Edward’s duty to remember. 
But who could have calculated upon the railway accident; and 
who could have foreseen a separation in the first blush of the 
honeymoon? Edward Arundel had trusted in his own power to 
protect his bride from every ill that might assail her. In the 
pride of his youth and strength he forgot .that he was not im¬ 
mortal, and the last idea that could have entered his mind was 
the thought that he should be stricken down by a sudden ca¬ 
lamity, and rendered even more helpless than the girl he had 
sworn to shield and shelter. 

The bleak winter crept slowly past, and the shrill March 
winds were loud amidst the leafless f rees in the wood behind 
Marchmont Towers. This wood was open to any foot passenger 
who might choose to wander that way; and Edward Arundel 
often walked upon the bank of the slow river, and past the boat¬ 
house, beneath whose shadow he had wooed his young wife in 
the bright summer that was gone. The place had a mournful 
attraction for the young man, by reason of the memory of the 
past, and a different and far keener fascination in the fact of 
Paul Marchmont’s frequent occupation of his roughly-built 
painting-room. 

In a purposeless and unsettled frame of mind Edward Arundel 


JOHN MARCHMONT >8 LEGACY. 223 

kept watch upon the man he hated, scarcely knowing why he 
watched, or for what he hoped, but with a vague belief that 
something would be discovered; that some accident might come 
to pass which would enable him to say to Paul Marchmont: 

“ It was by your treachery my wife perished, and it is you 
who must answer to me for her death.” 

Edward Arundel had seen nothing of his cousin Olivia during 
that dismal winter. He had held himself aloof from the Towers 
—that is to say, he had never presented himself there as a guest, 
though he had been often on horseback and on foot in the wood 
by the river. He had not seen Olivia, but he had heard of her 
through his valet, Mr. Morrison, who insisted on repeating the 
gossip of Kemberling for the benefit of his listless and indiffer¬ 
ent master. 

“ They do say as Mr. Paul Marchmont is going to marry Mrs. 
John Marchmont, sir,” Mr. Morrison said, delighted at the im¬ 
portance of his information. “ They say as Mr. Paul is always 
up at the Towers visitin’ Mrs. John, and that she takes his ad¬ 
vice about everything as she does, and that she’s quite wrapped 
up in him like.” 

Edward Arundel looked at his attendant with unmitigated 
surprise. 

“My cousin Olivia marry Paul Marchmont!” he exclaimed. 
“You should be wiser than to listen to such foolish gossip, Mor¬ 
rison. You know what country people are, and you know they 
can’t keep their tongues quiet.” 

Mr. Morrison took this reproach as a compliment to bis 
superior intelligence. 

“ It ain’t oftentimes I listen to their talk, sir,” he said; “ but 
if I’ve heard this said once, I’ve heard it twenty times; and I’ve 
heard it at the Black Bull, too, Mr. Edward, where Mr. March¬ 
mont frequents sometimes with his sister’s husband; and the 
landlord told me as it had been spoken of once before his face, 
and he didn’t deny it.” 

Edward Arundel pondered gravely over this gossip of the 
Kemberling people. It was not so very improbable, perhaps, 
after all. Olivia only held Marchmont Towers on sufferance. 
It might be that, rather than be turned out of her stately home, 
she would accept the hand of its rightful owner. She would 
marry Paul Marchmont, perhaps, as she had married his brother 
—for the sake of a fortune and a position. She had grudged 
Mary her wealth, and now she sought to become a sharer in that 
wealth. 

“ Oh, the villainy, the villainy!” cried the soldier. “ It is all 
one base fabric of treachery and wrong. A marriage between 
these two will be only a part of the scheme. Between them they 
have driven my darling to her death, and they will now divide 
the profits of their guilty work.” 

The young man determined to discover whether there had 
been any foundation for the Kemberling gossip. He had not 
seen his cousin since the day of his discovery of the paragraph 
in the newspaper, and he went forthwith to the Towers, bent on 


424 JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY ,. 

asking Olivia the straight question as to the truth of the reports 
that had reached his ears. 

He walked over to the dreary mansion. He had regained his 
strength by this time, and he had recovered his good looks; but 
something of the brightness of his youth was gone; something 
of the golden glory of his beauty had faded. He was no longer 
the young Apollo, fresh and radiant with the divinity of the 
skies. He had suffered; and suffering had left its traces on his 
countenance. That virgin hopefulness, that supreme confidence 
in a bright future, which is the virginity of beauty, had perished 
beneath the withering influence of affliction. 

Mrs. Marchmont was not to be seen at the Towers. She had 
gone down to the boat-house with Mr. Paul Marchmont and Mrs, 
Weston, the servant said. 

“I will see them together,” Edward Arundel thought. “I 
will see if my cousin dares to tell me that she means to marry 
this man.” 

He walked through the wood to the dilapidated building by 
the river. The March winds were blowing among the leafless 
trees, swirling the black pools of water that the rain had left in 
every hollow; the smoke from the chimney of Paul March- 
mont’s painting-room struggled hopelessly against the wind, 
and was beaten back upon the roof from which it tried to rise. 
Everything succumbed before that pitiless northeaster. 

Edward Arundel knocked at the door of the wooden edifice 
erected by his foe. He scarcely waited for the answer to his 
summons, but lifted the latch, and walked across the threshold, 
uninvited, unwelcome. 

There were four people in the painting-room. Two or three 
seemed to have been talking together when Edward knocked at 
the door; but the speakers had stopped simultaneously and ab¬ 
ruptly* and there was a dead silence when he entered. 

Olivia Marchmont was standing under the broad northern 
window; the artist was sitting upon one of the steps leading to 
the pavilion; and" a few paces from him, in an old cane chair 
near the easel, sat George Weston, the surgeon, with his wife 
leaning over the back of his chair. It was at this man that 
Edward Arundel looked longest, riveted by the strange expres¬ 
sion of his face. The traces of intense agitation have a pe¬ 
culiar force when seen in a usually stolid countenance. Your 
mobile faces are apt to give an exagerated record of emotion. 
We grow accustomed to their changeful expression, their vivid 
betrayal of every passing sensation. But this man’s was one of 
those faces which are only changed from their apathetic still¬ 
ness by some moral earthquake, wdiose shock arouses the dullest 
man from his stupid imperturbability. Such a shock had lately 
affected George Weston, the quiet surgeon of Kemberling, the 
submissive husband of Paul Marchmont’s sister. His face was 
as white as death; a slow trembling shook his ponderous frame; 
with one of his big fat hands he pulled a cotton handkerchief 
from his pocket, and tremulously wiped the perspiration from 
his bald forehead. His wife bent over him, and whispered a 
few words in his ear; but he shook his head with a piteous gest~ 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


225 


ure, as if to testify his inability to comprehend her. It was 
impossible for a man to betray more obvious signs of violent 
agitation than this man betrayed. 

“ It’s no use. Lavinia,” he murmured, hopelessly, as his wife 
■whispered to him for the second time; “it’s no use, my dear, I 
can't get over it.” 

Mrs. Weston cast one rapid, half-despairing, half-appealing 
glance at her brother, and in the next moment recovered her¬ 
self, by an effort only such as great women, or wicked women, 
are capable of. 

“Oh, you men!” she cried, in her liveliest voice; “oh, you 
men! What big silly babies, what nervous creatures you are! 
Come, George, I won't have you giving way to this fooiish non¬ 
sense just because an extra glass or so of Mrs. Marchrnont’s very 
tine old port has happened to disagree with you. You must not 
think that we are a drunkard, Mr. Arundel,” added the lady, 
turning playfully to Edward, and patting her husband’s clumsy 
shoulder as she spoke; “ we are only a poor village surgeon, 
with a very weak head, and quite unaccustomed to pale old 
port. Come, Mr. George Weston, march out into the open air, 
sir, and let us see if the March wind will bring you back your 
senses.” 

And without another word Lavinia Weston hustled her hus¬ 
band, who walked like a man in a dream, out of the painting- 
room. and closed the door behind her. 

Paul Marchmont laughed as the door closed upon his brother- 
in-law. 

“Poor George!” he said, carelessly; “I thought he helped 
himself to the port a little too liberally. He never could stand 
a glass of wine; and he’s the most stupid creature when he is 
drunk.” 

Excellent as all this by-play was, Edward Arundel was not 
deceived by it. 

“ The man was not drunk,” he thought; “ he was frightened. 
What could have happened to throw him into that state? 
What mystery are these people hiding among themselves, and 
what should he have to do with it ?” 

“Good-evening, Captain Arundel,” Paul Marchmont said. 
I congratulate you on the change in jrnur appearance since you 
were last in this place. You seem to have quite recovered the 
effects of that terrible railway accident.” 

Edward Arundel drew himself up stiffly as the artist spoke to 
him. 

“ We cannot meet except as enemies, Mr. Marchmont,” he 
said. “My cousin has no doubt told you what I said of you 
when I discovered the lying paragraph which you caused to be 
shown to mv wife.” 

“ I only did what any one else would have done under the 
circumstances,” Paul Marchmont answered quietly. “I was 
deceived by some penny-a-liner’s false report. How should I 
know the effect that report would have* upon my unhappy 
cousin ?” 

“ J cannot discuss this matter with you,” cried Edward 


226 


JOHN MARCHMONVS LEGACY. 


Arundel, his voice tremulous with passion; “ I am almost mad 
when I think of it. I am not safe; I dure not trust myself. I 
look upon you as the deliberate assassin of a helpless girl; but 
so skillful an assassin that nothing less than the vengeance of 
God can touch you. I cry aloud to Him night and day, in the 
hope that He will hear me and avenge my wife’s death. I can¬ 
not look to any earthly law for help; but I trust in God, I trust 
in God.” 

There are very few positive and consistent atheists in this 
world. Mr. Paul Marchmont was a philosopher of the infidel 
school, a student of Voltaire and the brotherhood of the Ency¬ 
clopedia, and a believer in those liberal days before the Reign 
of Terror, when Frenchmen, in coffee-houses discussed the 
supreme under the sobriquet of Monsieur l’Etre; but he grew a 
little paler as Edward Arundel, with kindling eyes and uplifted 
hand, declared his faith in a Divine Avenger. 

The skeptical artist may have thought: 

“ What if there should be some reality in the creed so .many 
weak fools confide in ? What if there is a God who cannot 
abide iniquity ?” 

“ I came here to look for you, Olivia,” Edward Arundel said, 
presently. “ I want to ask you a question. Will you come into 
the wood with me?” 

“ Yes, if you wish it,” Mrs. Marchmont answered quietly. 

The cousins went out of the pain ting-room together, leaving 
Paul Marchmont alone. They walked on for a few yards in 
silence. 

“ What is the question you came here to ask me ?” Olivia asked, 
abruptly. 

“ The Kemberling people have raised a report about you 
which I should fancy would be scarcely agreeable to yourself. 
You would hardly wish to benefit by Mary Marchmont’s death, 
would you, Olivia?” 

He looked at her searchingly as he spoke. Her face was at 
all times so expressive of hidden cares, of cruel mental tortures, 
that there was little room in her countenance for any new emo¬ 
tion. Her cousin looked in vain for any change in it now. 

“Benefit by her death!” she exclaimed. “How should I 
benefit by her death ?” 

“ By marrying the man who inherits this estate. They say 
you are going to marry Paul Marchmont.” 

Olivia looked at him with an expression of surprise. 

“Do they say that of me?” she asked. “Do people say 
that ?” 

“ They do. Is it true, Olivia?” 

The widow turned on him almost fiercely. 

“ What does it matter to you whether it is true or not ? What 
do you care whom I marry, or what becomes of me?” 

“I care this much,” Edward Arundel answered, “ that I 
would not have your reputation lied away by the gossips of 
Kemberling. I should despise you if you married this man. 
But if you do not mean to marry him, you have no right to en¬ 
courage his visits; you are trifling with your own good name. 


JOHN MAkCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


227 


You should leave this place, and by that means give the lie to any 
false reports that have arisen about you.” 

“Leave this place!” cried Olivia Marchmont, with a bitter 
laugh. “ Leave this place! Oh, my God, if I could; if I could 
go away and bury myself somewhere at the other end of the 
world, and forget—and forget!” She said this as if to herself; 
as if it was a cry of despair wrung from her in spite of herself; 
then, turning to Edward Arundel, she said, in a quieter voice, 
“I can never leave this place till I leave it in my coffin. I am 
a prisoner here for life.” 

She turned from him, and walked slowly away, with her face 
toward the dying sunlight in the low western sky. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

EDWARD’S VISITORS. 

Perhaps no greater sacrifice had ever been made by an En¬ 
glish gentleman than that which Edward Arundel willingly 
offered up as an atonement for his broken trust, as a tribute to 
his lost wife. Brave, ardent, generous, and sanguine, this young 
soldier saw before him a brilliant career in the profession which 
he loved. He saw glory and distinction beckoning to him from 
afar, and turned his back upon those shining sirens. He gave 
up all, in the vague hope of, sooner or later, avenging Mary’s 
wrongs upon Paul Marchmont. 

He made no boast, even to himself, of that which he had done. 
Again and again memory brought back to him the day upon 
which he breakfasted in Oakley Street and walked across Water¬ 
loo Bridge with the Drury Lane supernumerary. Every word 
that John Marchmont had spoken; every look of the meek and 
trusting eyes, the pale and thoughtful face; every pressure of 
the thin hand which grasped his in grateful affection, in friendly 
confidence—came back to Edward Arundel after an interval of 
nearly ten years, and brought with them a bitter sense of self- 
reproach. 

“ He trusted his daughter to me,” the young man thought. 
“Those last words in the poor fellow’s letter are always in my 
mind; ‘ The only bequest which I can leave to the only friend I 
have is the legacy of a child’s helplessness.’ And I have 
slighted this solemn warning: and I have been false to my 
trust.” 

In his scrupulous sense of honor, the soldier reproached him¬ 
self as bitterly for that imprudence, out of which so much evil 
had arisen, as another man might have done after a willful be¬ 
trayal of his trust. He could not forgive himself. He was 
forever and ever repeating in his own mind that one brief 
phrase which is the universal chorus of erring men’s regret. 
“ If I had acted differently, if I had done otherwise, this or that 
would not have come to pass.” We are perpetually wandering 
amidst the hopeless deviations of a maze, finding pitfalls and 
precipices, quicksands and morasses, at every turn in the pain¬ 
ful way; and we look back at the end of our journey to discover 
a straight and pleasant roadway by which, had we been wise 



m 


JOHN MARCHMONT*S LEGACY 


enough to choose it, we might have traveled safely and com¬ 
fortably to our destination. 

But "Wisdom waits for us at the goal instead of accompanying 
us upon our journey. She is a divinity whom we only meet 
very late in life; when we are too near the end of our trouble¬ 
some march to derive much profit from her counsels. We can 
only retail them to our juniors, who, not getting them from 
the"fountain-head, have very small appreciation of their value. 

The young captain of the East Indian cavalry suffered very . 
cruelly from the sacrifice which he had made. Day after day, j 
day after day, the slow, dreary, changeless, eventless, and un- [ 
broken life dragged itself out; and nothing happened to bring 
him any nearer to the purpose of this monotonous existence; 
no promise of even ultimate success rewarded his heroic self- 
devotion. Afar he heard of the rush and clamor of war, of 
dangers and terror, of conquest and glory. His own regiment 
was in the thick of the strife, his brothers in arms were doing 
wonders. Every mail brought some new record of triumph and 
glory. 

The soldier’s heart sickened as he read the story of each new 
encounter; his heart sickened with that terrible yearning—that 
yearning which seems physically palpable in its perpetual pain; 
the yearning with which a child at a hard school, lying broad 
awake in the long, gloomy, rush-lit bed-chamber in the dead of 
the silent night, remembers the soft resting-place of his mother’s 
bosom; the yearning with which a faithful husband far away 
from home sighs for the presence of the wife he loves. Even 
with such a heart-sickness as his Edward Arundel pined to be 
among the familiar faces yonder in the East—to hear the tri¬ 
umphant veil of his men as they swarmed after him through 
the breach in an Afghan wall—to see the dark heathens blanch 
under the terror of Christian swords. 

He read every record of the war again and again, again and 
again, till each scene arose before him—a picture, flaming and 
lurid, grandly beautiful, horribly sublime. The very words of 
those newspaper reports seemed to blaze upon the paper on 
which they were written, so palpable were the images which ~ 
they evoked in the soldier’s mind. He was frantic in his eager 
impatience for the arrival of eveiy mail, for the coming of each - 
new record of that Indian warfare. He was like a devourer of 
romances, who reads a thrilling story link by link, and who is 
impatient for every new chapter of the fiction. His dreams 
were of nothing but battle and victory, danger, triumph and 
death; and he often woke in the morning exhausted by the ex¬ 
citement of those visionary struggles, those phantom terrors. 

His saber hung over the chimney-piece in his simple bed¬ 
chamber. He took it down sometimes, and drew it from the 
sheath. He could have almost wept aloud over that idle sword. 
He raised his arm, and the weapon vibrated with a whizzing 
noise as he swept the glittering steel iu a wide circle through 
the empty air. An infidel’s head should have been swept from 
his vile carcase in that rapid circle of the keen-edged blade. The 
soldier’s arm was as strong as ever, his wrist as supple, his 



JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY, 229 

muscular force unwasted by mental suffering. Thank Heaven 
for that. But after that brief thanksgiving his arm dropped in¬ 
ertly, and the idle sword fell out of his relaxing grasp. 

“ I seem a craven to myself.” he cried “ I have no right to 
be here—I have no right to be here while those other fellows 
are fighting for their lives out yonder O, God, have mercy 
upon me! My brain gets dazed sometimes: and I begin to 
wonder whether I am most bound to remain here and watch 
Paul Marchmont, or to go yonder and fight for my country and 
my queen.” 

There were many phases in this mental fever. At one time 
the young man was seized with a savage jealousy of the officer 
who had succeeded to his captaincy. He watched this man’s 
name, and every record of his movements, and was constantly 
taking objection to his conduct. He was giudgingly envious of 
tins particular officer’s triumphs, however small. He could not 
feel generously toward this happy successor, in the bitterness of 
his own enforced idleness. 

“ What opportunities this man has!” he thought. “ 1 never 
had such chances.” 

It is almost impossible for me to faithfully describe the tort¬ 
ures which this monotonous existence inflicted upon the impet¬ 
uous young man. It is the specialty of a soldier’s career that it 
unfits most men for any other life. They cannot throw off the 
old habitudes. They cannot turn from the noisy stir of war to 
the tame quiet of everyday life; and even when they fancy 
themselves wearied and worn-out, and willingly retire from 
service, their souls are stirred by every sound of the distant 
contest, as the war-steed is aroused by the blast of a trumpet. 
But Edward Arundel’s career had been cut suddenly short at 
the very hour in which it was brightest with the promise of 
future glory. It was as if a torrent rushing madly down a 
mountain side had been dammed up, and its waters bidden to 
stagnate upon a level plain. The rebellious waters boiled and 
foamed in a sullen fury. The soldier could not submit himself 
contentedly to his fate. He might strip off his uniform, ani 
accept sordid coin as the price of the epaulets he had won so 
dearly; but he was at heart a soldier still. When he received 
the bank bills which were the price of his captaincy, it seemed 
to him almost as if he had sold his brother’s blood. 

It was summer-time now. Ten months had elapsed since his 
marriage with Mary Marchmont, and no new light had been 
thrown upon the disappearance of his young wife. No one 
could feel a moment’s doubt as to her fate. She had perished 
in that lonely river which flowed behind Marchmont Towers, 
and far away down to the sea. 

The artist had kept his word, and had as yet taken no step 
toward entering iuto possession of the estate which he inherited 
by his cousin’s death. But Mr. Paul Marchmont spent a great 
deal of time at the Towers, and a great deal more time in the 
painting-room by the river-side, sometimes accompanied by his 
sister, sometimes alone. 

The Kemberling gossips had grown by no means less talkative 


230 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


upon the subject of Olivia, and the new owner of Marchmont 
Towers. On the contrary, the voices that discussed Mrs. March- 
mont’s conduct were a great deal more numerous than hereto¬ 
fore; in other words, John Marchmont’s widow was “ talked 
about/’ Everything is said in this phrase. It was scarcely that 
people said bad things of her; it was rather that they talked 
more about her than any woman can suffer to be talked of with 
safety to her fair fame. They began by saying that she was 
going to marry Paul Marchmont; they went on to wonder 
whether she was going to marry him; then they wondered why 
she didn’t marry him. From this they changed the venue, and 
began to wonder whether Paul Marchmont meant to marry her 
—there was an essential difference in this new wonderment— 
and next, why Paul Marchmont didn’t marry her. And by this 
time Olivia’s reputation was overshadowed by a terrible cloud, 
which had arisen, no bigger than a man’s hand, in the first con- 
jeeturings of a few ignorant villagers. 

People made it their business first to wonder about Mrs. 
Marchmont, and then to set up their own theories about her; to 
which theories they clung with a stupid persistence, forgetting, 
as people generally do forget, that there might be some hidden 
clew, some secret key, to the widow’s conduct, for want of 
which the cleverest reasoning respecting her was only so much 
groping in the dark. 

Edward Arundel beard of the cloud which shadowed his 
cousin’s name. Her father heard of it, and went to remonstrate 
with her, imploring her to come to him at Swampington, and to 
leave Marchmont Towers to the new lord of the mansion. But 
she only auswered him with gloomy, obstinate reiteration, and 
almost in the same terms as she had answered Edward Arundel; 
declaring that she would stay at the Towers till her death; that 
she would never leave tne place till she was carried thence in 
her coffin. 

Hubert Arundel, always afraid of his daughter, was more than 
ever afraid of her now; and he was as powerless to contend 
agaiust her sullen determination, as he would have been to float 
up the stream of a rushing river. 

So Olivia was talked about. She had scared away all visitors 
after the ball at the Towers by the strangeness of her manner 
and the settled gloom in her face; and she lived unvisited and 
alone in the gaunt stony mansion; and people said that Paul 
Marchmont was almost perpetually with her, and that she went 
to meet him in the painting room by the river. 

Edward Arundel sickened of his wearisome life, and no one 
helped him to endure his sufferings. His mother wrote to him, 
imploring him to resign himself to the loss of his young wife, to 
return to Dangerfield, to begin a new existence, and to blot out 
the memory of the past. 

“ You have done all that the most devoted affection could 
prompt you to do.” Mrs. Arundel wrote. “ Come back to me, 
my dearest boy. I gave you up to the service of your country 
because it was my duty to resign you then. But I cannot afford 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


281 


to lose you now; I cannot bear to see you sacrificing yourself to 
a chimera. Return to me; and let me see you make a new and 
happier choice. Let me see my son the father of little children 
who will gather round my knees when I grow old and feeble.” 

“ A new and happier choice!” Edward Arundel repeated the 
words with a melancholy bitterness. ‘'No, my poor lost girl; 
no, my blighted wife, I will not be false to you. The smiles of 
happy women can have no sunlight for me while I cherish the 
memory of the sad eyes that watched me when I drove away 
from Milldale, the sweet sorrowful face that I was never to look 
upon again.” 

The dull empty days succeeded each other, and did resemble 
each other, with a wearisome similitude that well-nigh exhausted 
the patience of the impetuous young man. His fiery nature 
chafed against this miserable delay. It was so hard to have to 
wait for his vengeance. Sometimes he could scarcely refrain 
from planting himself somewhere in Paul Marchmont’s way, 
with the idea of a hand-to-hand struggle in which either he or 
his enemy must perish. 

Once he wrote the artist a desperate letter, denouncing him as 
an arch-piottef and villain; calling upon him, if his evil nature 
was redeemed by one spark of manliness, to fight him as men 
had been in the habit of fighting only a few years before, with a 
hundred times less reason than these two men had for their 
quarrel. 

I have called you a villain and traitor; in India we fellows 
would kill each other for smaller words than these,” wrote the 
soldier. But I have no wish to take any advantage of my 
military experience. I may be a better shot than you. Let us 
have only one pistol, and draw lots for it. Let us fire at each 
other across a dinner-table. Let us do anything, so that we 
bring this miserable business to an end.” 

Mr. Marchmont read this letter slowly and thoughtfully, more 
than once; smiling as he read. 

“ He’s getting tired,” thought the artist. “ Poor young man, 
I thought he would be the first to grow tired of this sort of 
work.” 

He wrote Edward Arundel a long letter; a friendly but rather 
facetious letter; such as he might have written to a child who 
had asked him to jump over the moon. He ridiculed the idea of 
a duel, as something utterly Quixotic and absurd. 

“ I am fifteen years older than you, my dear Mr. Arundel,” he 
wrote, “ and a great deal too old to have any inclination to fight 
with wind-mills; or to represent the wind-mill which a high- 
spirited young Quixote may choose to mistake for a villainous 
knight, and run his hot head against in that delusion. I am 
not offended with you for calling me bad names, and I take 
your anger merely as a kind of romantic manner you have of 
showing your love for my poor cousin. We are not enemies, 
and we never shall be enemies; for I will never suffer myself to 
be so foolish as to get into a passion with a brave and generous- 


m 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


hearted young soldier, whose only error is an unfortunate hallu¬ 
cination with regard to Your very humble servant. 

“ Paul Marchmont.” 

Edward ground his teeth with savage fury as he read this 
letter. 

“Is there no making this man answer for his infamy?” he 
muttered. “ Is there no way of making him suffer ?” 

******* 

June was nearly over, and the year was wearing round to the 
anniversary of Edward’s wedding-day, the anniversaries of 
those bright days which the young bride and bridegroom had 
loitered away by the trout-streams in the Hampshire meadows, 
when some most unlooked-for visitors made their appearance 
at Kemberling Retreat. 

The cottage lay back behind a pleasant garden, and was hid¬ 
den from the dusty high-road by a hedge of lilacs and labur¬ 
nums which grew within the wooden fence. It was Edward’s 
habit, in this hot summer-time, to spend a great deal of his time 
iD the garden, walking up and down the neglected paths with a 
cigar in his mouth, or lolling in an easy-chair on the lawn read¬ 
ing the papers. Perhaps the garden was almost prettier, by 
reason of the long neglect which it had suffered, than it would 
have been if kept in the trimmest order by the industrious hands 
of a skillful gardener. Everything grew in a wild and wanton 
luxuriance, that was very beautiful in this summer-time, when 
the earth was gorgeous with all manner o> blossoms. Trail mg 
branches from the espaliered apple-trees hung across the path¬ 
ways, intermingled with roses that had run wild; and made bits 
that a landscape-painter might have delighted to copy. Even 
the weeds, which a gardener would have looked upon in horror, 
were beautiful. The wild convolvulus flung its tendrils into 
fantastic wreaths and wild festoons about the bushes of sweet- 
briar; the honeysuckle, untutored by the pruning-knife, mixed 
its tall branches with seringa and clematis: the jasmine that 
crept about the house had mounted to the very chimney-pots, 
and strayed in through the open windows; even the stable roof 
was half-bidden by hardy monthly roses that had clambered up 
to the thatch. But the young soldier took very little interest in 
this disorderly garden. He pined to be far away in the thick 
jungle, or on the burning plain. He hated the quiet and repose 
of an existence which seemed little better than the living death 
of a cloister. 

The sun was low in the west at the close of a long mid-summer 
day when Mr. Arundel strolled up and down the neglected path¬ 
ways, backward and forward amidst the long-tangled grass of 
the lawn, smoking a cigar, and brooding over his sorrows. 

He was beginning to despair. He had defied Paul March¬ 
mont, and no good had come of his defiance. Ho had watched 
him, and there had been no result of his watching. Dav after 
day he had wandered down to the lonely pathway by the river¬ 
side; again and again he had reconnoitered the boat house, only 
to hear Paul Marchmont’s treble voice singing scraps out of 
modern operas as he worked at his easel; or on one or two oc- 


John MARcmroNrs legacy *; m 

casions to see Mr. George Weston, the surgeon, or Lavinia, his 
wife, emerge from the artist’s pain ting-room. 

Upon one of these occasions Ed ward Arundel had accosted the 
surgeon of Kemberling, aud had tried to enter into conversation 
with him. But Mr. Weston had exhibited such utterly hopeless 
stupidity, mingled with a very evident terror of his brother-in- 
law’s foe, that Edward had been faiu to abandon ail hope of any 
assistance from this quarter. 

I* I’m sure I’m very sorry for you, Mr. Arundel,” the surgeon 
said, looking, not at Edward, but about and around him, in a 
hopeless, wandering manner, like some hunted animal that looks 
far and near for a means of escape from his pursuer—‘‘I’m 
very sorry for you—and for all your trouble—and I was when I 
attended you at the Black Bull—and you were the first patient 
I ever had there—and it led to my having many more—as I may 
say—though that’s neither here nor there. And I*m very sorry 
for you, and for the poor young woman, too—particularly for 
the poor young woman—and I alwavs tell Paui so—and—aud 
Paul-” 

And at this juncture Mr. Weston stopped abruptly, as if ap¬ 
palled by the hopeless entanglement of his own ideas,” and with a 
brief “Good-evening, Mr. Arundel,” shot off in the direction of 
the Towers, leaving Edward at a loss to understand bis manner. 

So, on this mid-summer evening, the soldier walked up and 
down the neglected grass-plot, thinking of the men who had 
been his comrades, and of the career which he had abandoned 
for the love of his lost wife. 

He was aroused from his gloomy reverie by the sound of a 
fresh girlish voice calling to him by his name. 

“Edward! Edward!” 

Who could there be in Lincolnshire, in the name of all that 
is miraculous, with the right to call him thus by his Christian 
name? He was not long left in doubt. While he was 
asking himself the question, the same feminine voice cried out 
again: 

“Edward! Edward! Will you come and open the gate 
for me, please? Or do you mean to keep me out here for¬ 
ever ?” 

This time Mr. Arundel had no difficulty in recognizing the 
familiar tones of his sister Letitia, whom he had believed, 
until that moment, to be safe under the maternal wing at 
Dangerfield! And lo! here she was on horseback at his own 
gate, with a cavalier hat and feathers overshadowing her girl¬ 
ish face, and with another young Amazon on a thorough-bred 
chestnut, and a groom on a thorough-bred bay in the back¬ 
ground. 

Edward Arundel, utterly confounded by the advent of such 
visitors, flung away his cigar, and w<mt to the low wooden gate 
beyond which his sister’s steed was pawing the dusty road, im¬ 
patient of this stupid delay, and eager to be cantering stable- 
ward through the scented summer air. 

“Why, Letilia!” cried the young man, “ what, in mercy’s 
name, has brought you here ?” 


m JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

Miss Arundel laughed aloud at her brother’s look of sur¬ 
prise. 

“ You didn’t know I was in Lincolnshire, did you?” she asked; 
and then answered her own question in the same breath: “Of 
course you didn’t, because I wouldn’t let mamma tell you I was 
coming; for I wanted to surprise you, you know. And I think 
I have surprised you, haven’t I? I never saw such a scared- 
looking creature in all my life. If I were a ghost coming here 
in the gloaming, you couldn’t look more frightened than you 
did just now. I only came the day before yesterday, and I’m 
staying at Major Lawford’s, twelve miles away from here; and 
this is Miss Lawford who was at school with me at Bath. 
You’ve heard me talk of Belinda Lawford, my dearest, dearest 
friend? Miss Lawford, my brother; my brother, Miss Lawford. 
Are you going to open the gate and let us in, or do you mean to 
keep your citadel closed upon us altogether, Mr. Edward Arun¬ 
del ?” 

At this juncture the young lady in the background drew a lit¬ 
tle nearer to her friend, and murmured a remonstrance to the 
effect that it was very late, and that they were expected home 
before dark; but Miss Arundel refused to hear the voice of wis¬ 
dom. 

“Why, we’ve only an hour’s ride back,” she cried; “ and if it 
should be dark, which I don’t think it will be, for it’s scarcely 
dark all night through at this time of year, we’ve got Hoskins 
with us, and Hoskins will take care of us. Won’t you, Hos¬ 
kins?” demanded the young lady, turning to the groom with a 
most insinuating smile. 

Of course Hoskins declared that he was ready to achieve all 
that man could do or dare in the defense of his liege ladies, or 
something pretty nearly to that effect, but delivered in a vile 
Lincolnshire jiaiois not easily rendered in printer’s ink. 

Miss Arundel waited for no further discussion, but gave her 
hand to her brother, and vaulted lightly from her saddle. 

Then, of course, Edward Arundel offered his services to his 
sister’s companion, and then for the first time he looked in Be¬ 
linda Lawford’s face, and even in that one first glance saw that 
she was a good and beautiful creature, and that her hair, of 
which she had a great quantity, was of the color of her horse’s 
chestnut coat; that her eyes were the bluest he had ever seen, 
and that her cheeks were like the neglected roses in his garden. 
He held out his hand to her. She took it with a frank smile, 
and dismounted, and came in among the grass-grown pathways, 
amidst the confusion of trailing branches and bright garden- 
flowers growing wild. 

In that moment began the second volume of Edward Arun¬ 
del’s life. The first volume had begun upon the Christmas 
night on which the boy of seventeen went to see the panto¬ 
mime at Drury Lane Theater. The old story had been a long, sad 
story, full of tenderness and pathos, but with a cruel and dis¬ 
mal ending. The new story began to-night, in this fading west¬ 
ern sunshine, in this atmosphere of balmy perfume, amidst 
these dew-laden garden-flowers growing wild. 


885 


JOHN MARCBMONT ’S LEGACY. 

But, as I think I observed before at the outset of this story, 
we are rarely ourselves aware of the commencement of any 
new section in our lives. We look back afterward, and wonder 
to see upon what an insignificant incident the fate of after 
years depended. 

“ If I had gone down Piccadilly instead of taking a short cut 
aoross the Green Park the day I walked from Brompton to Char¬ 
ing Cross, I should not have met the woman I adore, and who 
has hen-pecked me so cruelly for the last fifteen years,” says 
Brown. 

“ If I had not invited Lord Claude Fitz Tudor to dinner, with 
a view to mortifying Bobinson of the war-office by the exhibition 
of an aristocratic acquaintance, that wretched story of domestic 
shame and horror might never have gone the round of the 
papers; Sir Cress well Cress well might never have been called 
on to decide upon a case in which I was the petitioner; 
and a miserable woman, now dragging out a blighted life in a 
tawdry lodging at Dieppe, might still be a pure English matron, 
a proud and happy mother!” says Jones, whose wife ran away 
from him with the younger son of a duke. 

It is only after the fact that we recognize the awful importance 
which actions, in themselves most trivial, assume by reason of 
their consequences; and when the action, in itself so unimpor¬ 
tant, in its consequences so fatal, has been in any way a devia¬ 
tion from the right, how bitterly we reproach ourselves for that 
false step! 

“ I am so glad to see you, Edward!” Miss Arundel exclaimed, 
as she looked about her, criticising her brother’s domain; “but 
you don’t seem a bit glad to see me, you poor gloomy old dear. 
And how much better you look than you did when you left 
Dangerfield! only a little care-worn, you know, still. And to 
think of your coming and burying yourself here, away from all 
the people who love you, you silly old darling! And Belinda 
knows the story, and she’s so sorry for you. Ain’t you, Linda? 
I call her Linda for short, and because it's prettier than Be - 
linda,” added the young lady aside to her brother, and with a 
contemptuous emphasis upon the first syllable of her friend’s 
name. 

Miss Lawford, thus abruptly appealed to, blushed, and said 
nothing. 

If Edward Arundel had been told that any other young lady 
was acquainted with the sad story of his married life, I think he 
would have been inclined to revolt against the very idea of her 
pity. But although he had only looked once at Belinda Law- 
ford, that one look seemed to have told him a great deal. He 
felt instinctively that she was as good as she was beautiful, and 
that her pity must be a most genuine and tender emotion, not 
to be despised by the proudest man upon earth. 

The two ladies seated themselves upon a dilapidated rustic 
seat amidst the long grass, and Mr. Arundel sat in the low bas¬ 
ket-chair in which he was wont to lounge a great deal of his 
time away. 

“Why don’t you have a gardener, Ned?” Letitia Arundel 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY, 


m 

asked, after looking rather contemptuously at the flowery luxu¬ 
riance around her. 

Her brother shrugged his shoulders with a despondent gest¬ 
ure. 

“Why should I take any care of the place?” he said. “X 
only took it because it was near the spot where—where mv 
poor girl—where T wanted to be. I have no object in beauti¬ 
fying it. 1 wish to Heaven I could leave it and go back to 
'» India?” 

He turned his face eastward as he spoke, and the two girls 
saw that half-eager, half-despairing yearning that was always 
visible in his face when he looked to the east. It was over yon¬ 
der, the scene of strife, the red field of glory, only separated 
from him by a patch of purple ocean, and a strip of yellow sand. 
It was yonder, hie couli almost feel the hot blast of the burn¬ 
ing air. He could almost hear the shouts of victory. And he 
was a prisoner here, bound by a sacred duty—by a duty which 
he owed to the dead. 

“ Major Lawford—Major Lawford is Belinda's papa; 33d Foot 
—Major Lawford knew that we were coming here, and he begged 
me to ask you to dinner; but I said you wouldn't come, for I 
knew you had shut yourself out of all society—though the 
major’s tbedearest creature, and theGrange is a most delightful 
place to stay at. I was down here in the midsummer holidays 
once, you know, wdiile you were in India. But I give the mes¬ 
sage as the major gave it to me; and you’re to come to dinner 
whenever you like.” 

Edward Arundel murmured a few polite words of refusal. 
No: he saw no society; he was in Lincolnshire to achieve a cer¬ 
tain object; he should remain there no longer than was necessary 
in order for him to do so. 

“ And you don’t even say that you’re glad to see me.” ex¬ 
claimed Miss Arundel. with an offended air, “though it’s six 
months since you were last at Dangerfield! Upon my word 
you’re a nice brother for an unfortunaie girl to waste her af¬ 
fections upon!” 

Edward smiled faintly at his sister’s complaint. 

“ I am very glad to see you, Letitia,” he said; “ verv, very 
glad.” 

And indeed the young hermit could not but confess to him¬ 
self that those two innocent young faces seemed to bring light 
and brightness with them, and to shed a certain transitory 
glimmer of sunshine upon the horrible gloom of his life. Mr. 
Morrison had come out to offer bis duty to the young lady— 
whom he had been intimate with from a very early period of 
her existence, and had carried upon his shoulder some fifteen 
years before—under the pretense of briuging wine for the visit¬ 
ors; and the stable-lad had been sent to a distant corner of the 
garden to search for strawberries for their refreshment. Even 
the solitary maid-servant had crept into the parlor fronting the 
lawn, and had shrouded herself behind the window-curtains, 
whence she could peep out at the two Amazons, and gladden 


JOHN MARCHMONT 'S LEGACY. 237 

her eyes with the sight of something that was young and beau¬ 
tiful. 

But the young ladies would not stop to drink any wine, though 
Mr. Morrison informed Letitia that the sherry was from the 
Dangerfield cellar, and had been sent there to Master Edward 
by his ma; nor to eat any strawberries, though the stabJe-boy, 
who made the air odorous with the scent of hay and oats, 
brought a little heap of freshly-gathered fruit piled upon a cab¬ 
bage leaf, and surmounted by a rampant caterpillar of the 
woolly species. They could not stay any longer, they both de¬ 
clared, lest there should be terror at Lawford Grange because 
of their absence. So they went back to the gate, escorted by 
Edward and his confidential servant: and after Letitia had 
given her brother a kiss, which resounded almost like the report 
of a pistol through the still evening air, the'two ladies mounted 
their horses, and cantered away in the twilight. 

“ I shall come and see you again, Ned,” Miss Arundel cried, as 
she shook the reins upon her horse's neck; “ and so will Belinda 
—won’t you, Belinda?” 

Miss Lawford’s reply, if she spoke at all, was quite inaudible 
amidst the clattering of the horses’ hoofs upon the hard high* 
road. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

ONE MORE SACRIFICE. 

Letitia Arundel kept her word and came very often to Rem- 
berling Retreat, sometimes on horseback, sometimes in a little 
pony carriage; sometimes accompanied by Belinda Lawford, 
sometimes accompanied by a younger sister of Belinda’s as 
chestnut-haired and blue-eyed as Belinda herself, but at the 
school-room and bread-and-butter period of life, and not par¬ 
ticularly interesting. Major Lawford came one day with his 
daughter and her friend, and Edward and the half-pay officer 
walked together up and down the grass-plot, smoking and talk¬ 
ing of the Indian war, while the two girls roamed about the 
garden among the roses and butterflies, tearing the skirts of 
their riding habits every now and then among the briars and 
gooseberry bushes. It was scarcely strange after this visit that 
Edward Arundel should consent to accept Major Lawford's in¬ 
vitation to name a day for dining at the Grange; he could not 
with a very good grace have refused. And yet—and yet—it 
seemed to him almost a treason against his lost love, his poor 
pensive Mary—whose face with the very look it had worn upon 
that last diy, was very present with him—to mix with happy 
people who had never known sorrow. But he went to the 
Grange, nevertheless, and grew more and more friendly with 
the major, and walked in the gardens—which were very large 
and old-fashioned,^utmost beautifully kept—with his sister and 
Belinda Lawford; with Belinda Lawford, who knew his story 
and was sorry for him. He always remembered that as he 
looked at her bright face, whose varying expression gave per* 
petual evidence of a compassionate and sympathetic nature. 



288 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY ,. 


“ If my poor darling had had this girl for a friend,” he 
thought, sometimes, how much happier she might have been.” 

I dare say there have been many lovelier women in this world 
than Belinda Lawford; many women whose faces, considered 
artistically, came nearer perfection; many noses more exqui¬ 
sitely chiseled, and scores of mouths bearing a closer affinity to 
Cupid's bow; but I doubt if any face was ever more pleasant to 
look upon than the face of this blooming English maiden. She 
had a beauty that is sometimes wanting in perfect faces, and 
lacking which the most splendid loveliness will pall at last upon 
eyes that have grown weary of admiring; she had a charm for 
want of which the most rigidly classical profiles, the most ex¬ 
quisitely statuesque faces, have seemed colder and harder than 
the marble it was their highest merit to resemble. She had the 
beauty of goodness, and to admire her was to do homage to the 
purest and highest attributes of womanhood. It was not only 
that her pretty little nose was straight and well-shaped, that her 
lips were rosy red, that her eyes were bluer than the summer 
heavens, and her chestnut hair tinged with the golden light of a 
setting sun; above and beyond such commonplace beauties as 
these, the beauties of tenderness, truth, faith, earnestness, hope, 
and charity, were enthroned upon her broad white brow, and 
crowned her queen by right divine of womanly perfection. A 
loving and devoted daughter, an affectionate sister, a true and 
faithful friend, an untiring benefactress to the poor, a gentle 
mistress, a well-bred Christian lady; in every duty and in every 
position she bore out and sustained the impression which her 
beauty made on the minds of those who looked upon her. She 
was only nineteen years of age, and no sorrow had ever altered 
the brightness of her nature. She lived a happy life with a 
father who was proud of her, and with a mother who resembled 
her in almost every attribute. She led a happy but a busy life, 
and did her duty to the poor about as scrupulously as even 
Olivia had done in the old days at SwampingtonKectory; but in 
such a genial and cheerful spirit as to win, not cold thankful¬ 
ness, but heart-felt love and devotion from all who partook of 
her benefits. 

Upon the Egyptian darkness of Edward Arundel’s life this 
girl arose as a star, and by and by all the horizon brightened 
under her influence. The soldier had been very little in the so¬ 
ciety of women. His mother, his sister Letitia, his cousin 
Olivia, and John Marchmont’s gentle daughter, were the only 
women whom he had ever known in the familiar freedom of do¬ 
mestic intercourse; and he trusted himself in the presence of 
this beautiful and noble-minded girl in utter ignorance of any 
danger to his own peace of mind. He suffered himself to be 
happy a,t Lawford Grange, and in those quiet hours which he 
spent there he put away his old life, and forgot the stern pur¬ 
pose that alone held him a prisoner in England. 

But when he went back to his lonely dwelling-place he re¬ 
proached himself bitterly for that which he considered a treason 
against his love. 

** What right have I to be happy among these people ?” he 


JOHN MARCHMONI ’’>$ LEGACY. 


239 


thought; ‘ what right have I to take life easily, even for an 
hour, while my darling lies in her unhallowed grave, and the 
man who drove her to her death remains unpunished ? I will 
never go to Lawford Grange again.” 

“ It seemed, however, as if everybody, except Belinda, was 
in a plot against this idle soldier; for sometimes Letitia coaxed 
him to ride back with her after one of her visits to Kemberling 
Retreat, and very often the major himself insisted, in a hearty 
military fashion, upon the young man’s taking the empty seat 
k in his dog-cart, to be driven over to the Grange. Edward 
* Arundel had never once mentioned Mary’s name to any member 
of this hospitable and friendly family. They were very good to 
him, and were prepared, he knew, to sympathize with him; but 
he could not bring himself to talk of his lost wife. The thought 
of that rash and desperate act which had ended her short life 
was too cruel to him. He would not speak of her, because he 
would have had to plead excuses for that one guilty act; and 
her image to him was so stainless and pure that he could not 
bear to plead for her as for a sinner who had need of men’s pity 
rather than a claim to their reverence. 

“ Her life has been so sinless,” he cried, sometimes; “ and to 
think that it should have ended in sin! If I could forgive Paul 
Marchmont for all the rest, if I could forgive him for my loss 
of her, I would never forgive him for that.” 

The young widower kept silence, therefore, upon the subject 
which occupied so large a share of bis thoughts, which was 
every day and every night the theme of his most earnest 
prayers; and Mary’s name was never spoken in his presence at 
Lawford Grange. 

But in Edward Arundel’s absence the tw r o girls sometimes 
talked of this sad story. 

“ Do you really think, Letitia, that your brother’s wife com¬ 
mitted suicide?” Belinda asked her friend. 

“ Oh, as for that, there can’t be any doubt about it, dear,” an¬ 
swered Miss Arundel, who was of a lively, not to say flippant 
disposition, and had no very great reverence for solemn things; 
“the poor dear creature drowned herself. I think she must 
have been a little wrong in her head. I don’t say so to Edward, 
you know; at least, I did say so once when he was at Danger- 
field, and he flew into an awful passion, and called me hard¬ 
hearted and cruel, and all sorts of shocking things; so of course 
I’ve never said so since. But really, the poor dear thing’s goings 
on were so eccentric; first she ran away from her step-mother, 
and went and hid herself in a horrid lodging; and then she mar¬ 
ried Edward at a nasty church in Lambeth, without so much as 
a wedding-dress, or a creature to give her away, or a cake, or 
cards, or anything Christian-like; and then she ran away again; 
and as her father had been a super—what’s its name ? a man 
who carries banners in pantomimes, and all that—I dare say 
she’d seen Mr. Macready as Hamlet, and had Ophelia’s death in 
her head when she ran down to the river-side and drowned her¬ 
self. I’m sure it’s a very sad story; and of course I’m awfully 
sorry for Edward.” 


240 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

The young lady said no more than this; but Belinda brooded 
over the story of that early marriage—the stolen honeymoon, 
the sudden parting. How dearly they must have loved each 
other, the young bride and bridegroom, absorbed in tleirown 
happiness,‘and forgetful of all the outward world! She pict¬ 
ured Edward Arundel's face as it must have been before care 
and sorrow had blotted out the brightest attribute of his beauty. 
She thought of him, and pitied him with such tender sympathy, 
that bv and by the thought of this young man’s sorrow seemed 
to 6hut almost every idea completely out of her mind. She 
went about her duties, cheerfully and pleasantly, as it was 
her nature to do everything; but the zest with which she had 
to perform each loving office, each act of sweet benevolence, 
seemed lost to her now. 

Kemember that she was a simple country damsel leading a 
quiet life, whose peaceful course was almost as calm and un¬ 
eventless as the existence of a cloister; a life so quiet that a de¬ 
cently-written romance from the Swampington book-club was 
a thing to be looked forward to with impatience, to read with 
breathless excitement, and to brood upon afterward for months. 
Was it strange then that this romance in real life, this sweet story 
of love and devotion, with its sad climax—this story, the scene 
of which Jay within a few miles of her home, the hero of which 
was her father’s constant guest—was it strange that this story, 
whose saddest charm was its truth, should make a strong im¬ 
pression upon the mind of an innocent and unworldly woman, 
and that day by day and hour by hour she should, all uncon¬ 
sciously to herself, feel a stronger interest in the hero of the 
tale ? 

She was interested in him. Alas! the truth must be set down, 
even if it has to be in plain old commonplace words. She fell 
in love with him. But love in this innocent and womanly 
nature was so different a sentiment to that which had raged in 
Olivia’s stormy breast tbateven she who felt it was unconscious 
of its gradual birth. It was not “ an Adam at its birth.” by the 
bye. It did not leap. Minerva-like, from the brain; for I believe 
that love is born of the brain oftener than of the heart, being a 
strange compound of facv and folly, ideality, veneratiou, and 
delusion. It came rather like the gradual dawning of a sum¬ 
mer’s morning—first a little patch of light, far away in the east, 
very faint and feeble; then a slow widening of the rosy bright¬ 
ness; and at last a great blaze of splendor over all the width of 
the. vast heavens. And then. Miss La wford grew more reserved 
in her intercourse with her friend’s brother. Her frank good¬ 
nature gave place to a timid, shrinking bashfulness that made 
her ten times more fasciuating than she had been before. She 
w-as so very young, and had mixed so little with the world, that 
she had yet to learn the comedy of life. She had yet to learn to 
smile when she was sorry, or to look sorrowful when she was 
pleased, as prudence might dictate; to blush at will, or to grow 
pale when it was politic to sport the lily tint. She was a natu¬ 
ral, artless, spontaneous creature, and she was utterly power¬ 
less to conceal her emotions, or to pretend a sentiment she did 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY . 


m 


not feel. She blushed rosy red when Edward Arundel spoke to 
her suddenly. She betrayed herself by a hundred signs; mutely 
confessed her love almost as artlesslv as Mary had revealed her 
affection a twelvemonth before. But if Edward saw this he 
gave no sign of having made the discovery. His voice, perhaps, 
grew a little lower and softer in its tone when he spoke to Be¬ 
linda; but there was a sad cadence in that low voice which was 
too mournful for the accent of a lover. 

Sometimes, when his eyes rested for a moment on the girl’s 
blushing face, a shadow would darken his own, and a faint 
quiver of emotion stir his lower lip; but it is impossible to say 
what this emotion may have been. Belinda hoped nothing, 
expected nothing, I repeat that she was unconscious of 
the nature of her own feeling; and she had never for a 
moment thought of Edward otherwise than as a man who 
could go to his grave faithful to that sad love-story which had 
blighted the promise of his youth. She never thought of him 
otherwise than as Mary's constant mourner: she never hoped 
that time would alter his feelings or wear out his constancy; yet 
she loved him, notwithstanding. 

All through July and August the young man visited at the 
Grange, and at the beginning of September Letitia Arundel 
went back to Dangerfield. But even then Edward was still a 
frequent guest at Major Law ford’s, for his enthusiasm upon all 
military matters had made him a very great favorite with the 
old officer. But toward the end of September Mr. Arundel’s 
visits suddenly were restricted to an occasional call upon the 
major; he left off dining at the Grange; his evening rambles in 
the garden with Mrs. Lawford and her blooming daughters— 
Belinda had no less tf an four blue-eyed sisters, all more or less 
resembling herself—ceased altogether, to the wonderment of 
every one in the old-fashioned country-house. 

Edward Arundel shut out the new light which had dawned 
upon his life, and withdrew into the darkness. He went back 
to the stagnant monotony, the hopeless despondency, the bitter 
regret, of his old existence. 

“ While my sister was at the Grange I had an excuse for 
going there,’he said to himself, sternly. “I have no excuse 
now.” 

But the old monotcnous life was somehow or other a great 
deal more difficult to bear than it had been before. Nothing 
seemed to interest the young man now. Even the records of 
Indian victories were "‘‘flat, stale, and unprofitable.” He 
wondered at the remembrance with what eager impatience he 
had once pined for the coming of the newspapers, with what 
frantic haste he had devoured every syllable of the Indian news. 
All his old feelings seemed to have gone away, leaving nothing 
in his mind but a blank waste, a weary sickness of life and all 
belonging to it. Leaving nothing else—positively nothing? 
‘•No!” he answered, in reply to these mute questionings of his 
own spirit— “ no,” he repeated, doggedly, “ nothing.'’ 

It was strange to find what a blank was left in his life by rea¬ 
son of his abandonment of the Grange. It seemed as if he had 


242 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


suddenly retired from an existence full of pleasure and delight 
into the gloomv solititude of La Trappe. And yet what was it 
that he had lost, after all? A quiet dinner at a country-house, 
and an evening spent half in the leafy silence of an old-fash¬ 
ioned garden, half in a pleasant drawing-room, among a group 
of well-bred girls, and only enlivened by simple English ballads 
or pensive melodies by Mendelssohn. It was not much to forego, 
surely. And yet Edward Arundel felt, in sacrificing these new 
acquaintance at the Grange to the stern purpose of his life, al¬ 
most as if he bad resigned a second captaincy for Mary’s sake. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE CHILD'S VOICE IN THE PAVILION BY THE WATER. 

The year wore slowly on. Letitia Arundel wrote very long 
letters to her friend and confidante, Belinda Lawford, and in 
each letter demanded particular intelligence of her brother’s 
doings. Had he been to the Grange ? how had he looked ? what 
had he talked about ? etc., etc. But to these questions Miss Law- 
ford could only return one monotonous reply: Mr. Arundel had 
not been at the Grange; or Mr. Arundel had called on papa one 
morning, but had only stayed a quarter of an hour, and had not 
been seen by any female member of the family. 

The year wore slowly on. Edward endured his self-appointed 
solitude, and waited, waited, with a vengeful hatred forever 
brooding in his breast, for the day of retiibution. The year wore 
on, and the anniversary of the day upon which Mary ran away 
from the Towers, the 17th of October, came at last. 

Paul Marchmont had declared his intention of taking pos¬ 
session of the Towers upon the day following this. The twelve- 
months’ probation which he had imposed upon himself had ex¬ 
pired; every voice was loud in praise of his conscientious and 
honorable conduct. He had grown very popular during his resi¬ 
dence at Kemberling. Tenant farmers looked forward to hal¬ 
cyon days under his dominion; to leases renewed on favorable 
terms; to repairs liberally executed: to everything that was de¬ 
lightful between landlord and tenant. Edward Arundel heard 
all this through his faithful servitor, Mr. Morrison, and chafed 
bitterly at the news. This traitor was to be happy and prosper¬ 
ous, and to have the good word of honest men; while Mary lay 
in her unhallowed grave, and people shrugged their shoulders, 
half compassionately, half contemptuously, as they spoke of the 
mad heiress who had committed suicide. 

Mr. Morrison brought his master tidings of all Paul Marcli- 
mont’s doings about this time. He was to take possession of the 
Towers on the 19th. He had already made several alterations 
in the arrangement of the different rooms. He had ordered 
new furniture from Swampington—another man would have 
ordered it from London; but Mr. Marchmont was bent upon 
being popular, and did not despise even the good opinion of a 
local tradesman—and by several other acts, insignificant in 
themselves, had asserted his ownership of the mansion which 



JOHN MARCH MO NT '& LEGACY. 248 

had been the airy castle of Mary Marchmont’s day-dreams ten 
years before. 

The coming in of the new master of Marchmont Towers was 
to be, take it all together, a very grand affair. The Chorley 
Castle fox-hounds were to meet, at eleven o’clock, upon the 
great grass-plot, or lawn, as it was popularly called, before the 
western front. The country gentry from far and near had been 
invited to a hunting-breakfast. Open house was to be kept all 
day for rich and poor. Every male inhabitant of the district 
who could muster anything in the way of a mount was likely to 
join the friendly gathering. Poor Reynard is decidedly Eng¬ 
land’s most powerful leveler. All differences of rank and sta¬ 
tion, all distinctions which Mammon raises in every other 
quarter, melt away before the friendly contact of the hunting- 
field. The man who rides best is the best man; and the voung 
buteller who makes light of sunk fences, and skims, bird-like, 
over bullfinches and timber, may hold his own with the dandy 
heir to half the country-side. The cook at March mont Towers 
had enough to do to prepare for this great day. It was the first 
meet of the season, and in itself a solemn festival. Paul March- 
mont knew this; and though the cockney artist of Fitzroy Square 
knew about as much of fox-hunting as he did of the source of the 
Nile, he seized upon the opportunity of making himself popular, 
and determined to give such a hunting-breakfast as had never 
been given within the walls of Marcbmont Towers since the 
time of a certain rackety Hugh March mont, who had drunk 
himself to death early in the reign of George III. He spent the 
morning of the 17th in the steward’s room, looking through the 
cellar-book with the old butler, selecting the wines that were 
to be drunk the following day, and planning the arrangements 
for the mass of visitors, who were to be entertained in the great 
stone entrance-hall, in the kitchens, in the housekeeper’s room, 
in the servants’ hall, in almost every chamber that afforded ac¬ 
commodation for a guest. 

“ You will take care that people get placed according to their 
rank,” Paul said to the gray-haired servant. “ You know every¬ 
body about here, I dare say, and you will be able to manage so 
that we may give no offense.” 

The gentry were to breakfast in the long dining-room and in 
the western drawing-room. Sparkling hocks and Burgundies, 
fragrant Moselles, champagnes of choicest brand and rarest 
bouquet, were to flow like water for the benefit of the country 
gentlemen who should come to do honor to Paul Marchmont’s 
installation. Great cases of comestibles had been sent by rail 
from Fortnum & Mason’s; and the science of the cook at the 
Towers had been taxed to the utmost, in the struggles which 
she made to prove herself equal to the occasion. Twenty one 
great casks of ale, each cask containing twenty-one gallons, had 
been brewed long ago, at the birth of Arthur Marchmont, and 
had lain in the cellar ever since, waiting for the majority 
of the young heir who was never to come of age. This very ale, 
with a certain sense of triumph. Paul Marchmont ordered to be 
brought forth for the refreshment of the commoners. 


244 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

“ Poor young Arthur!” he thought, after he had given this 
order. “ I saw him once when he was a pretty boy with fair 
ringlets, dressed in a suit of black velvet. His father brought 
him to ray studio one day when lie came to patronize me and 
buy a picture of me—out of sheer charity, of course, for he cared 
as much for pictures as I do for fox-hounds. I was a poor rela¬ 
tion then, and never thought. to see the inside of Marchmout 
Towers. It was a lucky September morning that swept that 
bright-faced boy out of my pathway, and left only sickly John 
Marchmont and his daughter between me and fortune.” 

Yes; Mr. Paul Marchmont's year of probation was past. He 
had asserted himself to Messrs. Paulette, Paulette & Mathewsou, 
and before the face of all Lincolnshire, in the character of an 
honorable and high-minded man; slow to seize upon the fortune 
that had fallen to him, conscientious, punctilious, generous, and 
unselfish. He had done all this; and now the trial was over, 
and the day of triumph had come. 

There has been a race of villains of late years very popular 
with the novel writer and the dramatist, but not, I think, quite 
indigenous to this honest British soil; a race of pale-faced, 
dark-eyed, and all-accomplished scoundrels, whose chiefest at¬ 
tribute is imperturbability. The imperturbable villain has been 
guilty of every iniquity in the black catalogue of crimes; but 
he has never been guilt}' of an emotion. He wins a million of 
money at trente et quarante, to the terror and astonishment of 
all Homburg; and by not so much as one twinkle of his eye or 
one quiver of his lip does that imperturbable creature betray a 
sentiment of satisfaction. Ruin or glory, shame or triumph, 
defeat, disgrace, or death—all are alike to the callous ruffian of 
the Anglo-Gallic novel. He smiles, and murders while he 
smiles, and smiles while he murders. He kills his adversary, 
unfairly, in a duel, and wipes his sword on a cambric handker¬ 
chief; and withal he is so elegant, so fascinating, and so hand¬ 
some, that the young hero of the novel has a very poor chance 
against him; and the reader can scarcely help being sorry when 
retribution comes with the last chapter, and some crushing 
catastrophe annihilates the well-bred scoundrel. 

Paul Marchmont was not this sort of man. He was a hypo¬ 
crite when it was essential to his own safety to practice hypoc¬ 
risy; but he did not accept life as a drama, in which he was 
forever to be acting a part. Life would scarcely be worth the 
having to any man upon such terms. It is all very well to wear 
heavy plate-armor, aud a casque that weighs fourteen pounds 
or so, when we go into the thick of the fight. But to wear the 
armor always, to live in it, to sleep in it, to carry the ponderous 
protection about us forever and ever! Safety would be too dear 
if purchased by such a sacrifice of all personal ease. Paul 
Marchmont, therefore, being a selfish and self-indulgent man, 
only wore his armor of hypocrisy occasionally, and when it was 
vitally necessary for his preservation. He had imposed upon 
himself a penance, and acted a part in holding back for a year 
from the enjoyment of a splendid fortune; and he had made 
this one great sacrifice in order to give the lie to Edward Artra- 


JOHN MARCUMONT’S LEGACY . 


245 


del’s tfague accusations, which might have had an awkward 
effect upon the minds of other people, had the artist grasped too 
eagerly at his missing cousin’s wealth. 

Paul Marchmont had made this sacrifice; but he did not in¬ 
tend to act a part all his life. He meant to enjoy himself, and 
to get the fullest possible benefit out of his good fortune. He 
meant to do this; and upon the 17th of October he made no 
effort to restrain his spirits, hut laughed and talked joyously 
with whoever came in his way, winning golden opinions from 
all sorts of men; for happiness is contagious, and everybody 
likes happy people. 

Forty years of poverty is a long apprenticeship to the very 
hardest of masters—an apprenticeship calculated to give the 
keenest possible zest to newlv acquired wealth. Paul March¬ 
mont rejoiced in his wealth with an almost delirious sense of 
delight. It was his at last. At last! He had waited, and 
waited patiently; and at last, while his powers of enjoyment 
were still in their zenith, it had come. How often he had 
dreamed of this; how often he bad dreamed of that which was 
to take place to-morrow! How often in his dreams he had seen 
the stone-built mansion, and hoard the voices of the crowd 
doing him honor. He had felt all the pride and delight of pos¬ 
session, to awake suddenly in the midst of his trfumph, and 
gnash his teeth at the remembrance of his poverty. And now 
the poverty was a thing to be dreamed ahout, and the wealth 
was his. He had always been a gOod son and a kind brother; 
and his mother and sister were to arrive upon the eve of his 
installation, and were to witness his triumph. The rooms that 
had been altered were chosen by Paul for his mother and 
maiden sister, and the new furniture had been ordered for their 
comfo.rt. It was one of his many pleasures upon this day to 
inspect the apartments, to see that all his directions had 
been faithfully carried out, and to speculate upon the effect 
which these spacious and luxurious chambers would have upon 
the minds of Mrs. Paul Marchmont and her daughter, newly 
come from shabby lodgings in Charlotte Street. 

“ My poor mother!” thought the artist, as he looked round the 
! pretty* sitting-room. This sitting-room opened into a noble bed¬ 
chamber, beyond which there was a dressing room. “ My poor 
mother!” he thought; “she has suffered a longtime, and she 
has been patient. She has never ceased to believe in me; apd 
she will see now that there is some reason for that belief. I told 
her long ago, when our fortunes were at the lowest ebb, when I 
was painting landscapes for the furniture brokers at a pound 
apiece—I told her I was meant for something better than a 
tradesman’s hack; and I have proved it—I have proved it.” 

He walked about the room arranging the furniture with his 
own hands; walking a few paces backward now and then to 
contemplate such an effect from an artistic point of view; fling¬ 
ing the rich stuff of the curtains into graceful folds; admiring 
and examining everything, always with a smile on his face. He 
seemed thoroughly happy. If he had done any wrong; if by 
any act of treachery he had hastened Mary Arundel’s death, no 


246 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 


recollection of that foul work arose in his breast to disturb the 
pleasant current of his thoughts. Selfish and self-indulgent, 
only attached to those who were necessary, to his own hap¬ 
piness, his thoughts rarely wandered beyond the narrow circle 
of his own cares or his own pleasures. He was thoroughly selfish. 
He could have sat at a lord mayors feast with a famine-stricken 
population clamoring at the door of the banquet-chamber. He 
believed in himself as his mother and sister had believed; and he 
considered that he had a right to be happy and prosperous, 
whoever suffered sorrow or adversity. 

Upon this 17th of October Olivia Marchmont sat in the little 
study looking out upon the quadrangle, whilst the household 
was busied with the preparations for the festival of the following 
day. She was to remain at Marchmont Towers as a guest of the 
new master of the mansion. She would be protected from all 
scandal, Paul had said, by the presence of his mother and sister. 
She could retain the apartments she had been accustomed to 
occupy; she could pursue her old mode of life. He himself was 
not likely to be very much at the Towers. He was going to 
travel and enjoy life now that he was a rich man. 

These were the arguments which Mr. Marchmont used when 
openly discussing the widow’s residence in his house. But in a 
private conversation between Olivia and himself he had only 
said a very few words on the subject. 

“ You must remain,” he said, and Olivia submitted, obeying 
him with a sullen indifference that was almost like the mechan¬ 
ical submission of an irresponsible being. John Marchmont’s 
widow seemed entirely under the domain of the new master of 
the Towers. It was as if the stormy passions which had arisen 
out of a slighted love had worn out this woman’s mind, and 
had left her helpless to stand against the force of Paul March- 
mont’s keen and vigorous intellect. A remarkable change had 
come over Olivia’s character. A dull apathy had succeeded that 
fiery energy of soul which had enfeebled and well-nigh worn 
out her body. There were no outbursts of passion now. She 
bore the miserable monotony of her life uncomplainingly. Day 
after day, week after week, month after month, idle and apa¬ 
thetic, she sat in her lonely room, or wandered slowly in the 
grounds about the Towers. She very rarely went beyond these 
grounds. She was seldom seen now in her old pew at Keuiber-f 
ling church; and when her father went to her and remonstrated 
with her for her non-attendance, she told him sullenly that she 
was too ill to go. She was ill. 

George Weston attended her constantly; but he found it very 
difficult to administer to such a sickness as hers, and he could 
only shake his head despondently when he felt her feeble pulse, 
or listened to the slow beating of her heart. Sometimes she 
would shut herself up in her room for a month at a time, and see 
no one but Mr. Weston—whom, in her utter indifference, she 
seemed to regard as a kind of domestic animal, whose going or 
coming was alike unimportant—and her faithful servant Bar¬ 
bara. 

This stolid, silent Barbara waited upon her mistress with un* 


247 


JOHN MARCH MONT’S LEGACY. 

tiring patience. She bore with every change of Olivia’s gloomy 
temper: she was a perpetual shield and protection to her. Even 
upon this day of preparation and disorder Mrs. Simmons kept 
guard over the passage leading to the study, and took care that 
no one intruded upon her mistress. At about four o’clock all 
Paul Marchmont’s orders had been given, and the new master of 
the house dined for the first time by himself at the head of the 
long carved oak dining-table, waited upon in solemn state by the 
old butler. His mother and sister were to arrive by a train that 
would reach Swampington at ten o’clock, and one of the car¬ 
riages from the Towers was to meet them at the station. The 
artist had leisure in the meantime for any other business he 
might have to transact. 

He ate his dinner slowly, thinking deeply all the time. He did 
not stop to drink any wine after dinner, but as soon as the cloth 
was'removed rose from the table, and went straight to Olivia’s 
room. 

“Iam going down to the painting-room,” he said. “Will 
you come there presently? I want very much to say a few words 
to you.” 

Olivia was sitting near the window, with her hands lying idle 
in her lap. She rarely opened a book now, rarely wrote a letter, 
or occupied herself in any manner. She scarcely raised her eyes 
as she answered him. 

“ Yes.” she said; “ i will come.” 

“Don’t be long, then. It will be dark very soon. I am not 
going down there to paint; I am going to fetch a landscape that 
I want to hang in my mother’s room, and to say a few words 
about-” 

He closed the door without stopping to finish the sentence, 
and went out into the quadrangle. 

Ten minutes afterward Olivia Marchmont rose, and, taking a 
heavy woolen shawl from a chair near her, wrapped it loosely 
about her head and shoulders. 

“Iam bis slave and his prisoner,” she muttered to herself. 
“ I must do as be bids me.” 

A cold wind was blowing in the quadrangle, and the stone 
pavement was wet with a drizzling rain. The sun had just 
gone down, and the dull autumn sky was darkening. The 
fallen leaves in the wood were sodden with damp, and rotted 
slowly on the swampy ground. 

Olivia took her way mechanically along the narrow pathway 
leading to the river. Half-way between Marchmont Towers 
and the boat house she came suddenly upon the figure of a man 
walking toward her through the dusk. This man was Edward 
Arundel. 

The two cousins had not met since the March evening upon 
which Edward had gone to seek the widow in Paul March¬ 
mont’s painting-room. Olivia’s pale face grew whiter as she 
recognized the soldier. 

“I was coming to the house to speak to you, Mrs. March¬ 
mont,” Edward said, sternly. “ I am lucky in meeting you 


248 JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY . 

here, for I don’t want any one to overhear what I’ve got to 

He had turned in the direction in which Olivia hod been 
walking; but she made a dead stop, and stood looking at him. 

“You were goiug to the boat-house,” lie said. “I vvill go 
there with you.” 

She looked at him for a moment, as if doubtful what to do, 
and then said: 

“Very well. You can say what you have to say to me, and 
then leave me. There is no sympathy between us; there is no 
regard between us: we are only antagonists.” 

“ I hope not, Olivia. I hope there is some spark of regard 
still, in spite of all. I separate you in my own mind from 
Paul Marchmont. I pity you, for I believe you to be his 
tool.” 

“ Is that what you have to say to me?” , 

“No; I came here as vour kinsman, to ask you what you 
mean to do now that Paul Marchmont lias taken possession of 
the Towers ?” 

“ I mean to stay there.” 

“In spite of the gossip that your remaining will give rise to 
among these country people!” 

“ In spite of everything. Mr. Marchmont wishes me to 
stay. It suits me to stay. What does it matter what peo¬ 
ple say of me? What do I care for any one's opinion— 
now ?” 

“ Olivia,” cried the young man, “ are you mad ?’’ 

“Perhaps I am,” she answered, coldly. 

“Why is it that you shut yourself from the sympathy of 
those who-have a right to care for you? What is the mystery 
of your life ?” 

His cousin laughed bitterly. 

“Would you like to know, Edward Arundel ?” she said. 
“You shall know, perhaps, some day. You have despised 
me all my life: you will despise me more and more then.” 

They had reached Paul Marchmont's paintmg-room by this 
time. Olivia opened the door and walked in, followed by 
Edward. Paul was not there. There was a picture cov¬ 
ered with a green bnize upon the easel, and the artist’s hat 
6tood upon the table amidst the litter of brushes and pallets; 
but the room was empty. The door at the top of the stone steps 
leading to the pavilion was ajar. 

“ Have you anything more to say to me?’’ Olivia asked, turn¬ 
ing upon her cousin as if she would have demanded why he had 
followed her. 

“Only tiiis: I want to know vour determination; whether 
you will be advised by me—and your father—I saw my uncle 
Hubert this morning, and his opinion exactly coincides with 
mine—or whether you mean obstinately to take your own 
course in defiance of everybody ?’’ 

“ I do,” Olivia answered. “ I shall take my own course. T 
defy everybody. I have not been gifted with the power of win¬ 
ning people’s affection. Other women possess that power, and 


S49 


JOHN MAUCHMONT ’£ LEGACY. 

trifle with it, and turn it to bad account. I have prayed, Ed¬ 
ward Arundel--yes, 1 have prayed upon my knees to the God 
who made me, tnat He would give me some poor measure of 
that gift which Nature has lavished upon other women; but He 
would not hear me. He would not hear me. I was not made to 
be loved. Why. then, should I make myself a slave for the sake 
of winning people’s esteem ? If they have despised me, I can 
despise them.” 

“Who has despised you, Olivia?” Edward asked, perplexed 
by his cousin’s tnauner. 

“You have!” she cried, with flashing eyes; “you have! 
From first to last—from first to last!” She turned awav from 
him impatiently. “Go,” site said; •* why should we keep up a 
mockery of friendship and cousinship? We are nothing to each 
other.” 

Edward walked toward the door; but he paused upon the 
threshold with his hat in hi3 hand, undecided as to what he 
ought to do. 

As he stood thus, perplexed and irresolute, a cry, the feeble 
cry of a child, sounded within the pavilion. 

The young man started and looked at his cousin. Even iii 
the dusk he could see that her face had suddenly grown livid. 

“ There is a child in that place,” he said, pointing to the door 
at the top of the steps. 

The cry was repeated as he spoke—the low, complaining wail 
of a child. There was no other voice to be heard—no mother’s 
voice, soothing a helpless little one. The cry of the child was 
followed by a dead silence. 

“There is a child in that pavilion,” Edward Arundel re¬ 
peated. 

“ There is,” Olivia answered. 

“ Whose child ?” 

“ What does it matter to you?” 

“ Whose etiild ?” 

“I cannot tell you, Edward Arundel.” 

The soldier strode toward the steps, but before he could reach 
them Olivia flung herself across bis path. 

“I will see whose child is hidden in that place” he said. 
“Scandalous things have been said of you, Olivia. I will know 
the reason of your visits to this place.” 

She clung about his knees and hindered him from moving; 
half kneeling, half-crouching ou the lowest of the stone-steps 
she blocked his pathway and prevented him from reaching the 
door of the pavilion. It had been ajar a few minutes ago; it was 
shut now. But Edward had rot noticed this. 

“ No. no, no!” shrieked Olivia; “ you shall trample me to death 
before you enter that place. You shall walk over my corpse be¬ 
fore you pass over that threshold.” 

The young man struggled with her for a few moments; then 
he suddenly flung her from him—not violently, but with a con¬ 
temptuous gesture. 

“ You are a wicked woman, Olivia Marchmont,” he said; 
“ and it matters very little to me what you do or wbafc becomes 


250 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


of you. I know now the secret of the mystery between you and 
Paul Marchmont. I can guess your motive for perpetually 
haunting this place.” 

He left the solitary building by the river, and walked slowly 
back through the wood. 

His mind—predisposed to think ill of Olivia by the dark 
rumors he had heard through his servant, and which had had a 
certain amount of influence upon him, as all scandals have, 
however baseless—could imagine only one solution to the 
mystery of a child’s presence in the lonely building by the river. 
Outraged and indignant at the discovery he had made, he turned 
his back upon Marchmont Towers. 

‘‘I will stay in this hateful place no longer,” he thought, as 
he went back to his solitary home; “ but before I leave Lincoln¬ 
shire the whole county shall know what I think of Paul March¬ 
mont.” 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

CAPTAIN ARUNDEL’S REVENGE. 

Edward Arundel went back to his lonely home with a set¬ 
tled purpose in his mind. He would leave Lincolnshire—and 
immediately. He had no motive for remaining. It may be, in¬ 
deed, that he had a strong motive for going away from the 
neighborhood of Lawford Grange. There was a lurking danger 
in the close vicinage of that pleasant, old-fashioned country 
mansion, and the bright band of blue-eyed damsels who inhab¬ 
ited it. 

“I will turn my back upon Lincolnshire forever,” Edward 
Arundel said to himself once more, upon his way homeward 
through the October twilight; “but before I go, the whole 
county shall know what I think of Paul Marchmont.” 

He clinched his fists and ground his teeth involuntarily as he 
thought this. 

It was quite dark when he let himself in at the old-fashioned 
half-glass door that led into his humble sitting-room at Kember- 
ling Retreat. He looked around the little chamber, which had 
\ been furnished forty years before by the proprietor of the cot¬ 
tage, and had served for one tenant after another, until it 
seemed as if the spindle-legged chairs and tables had grown at¬ 
tenuated and shadowy by much service. He looked at the sim¬ 
ple room, lighted by a bright fire and a pair of wax-candles in 
antique silver candlesticks. The red fire-light flickered and 
trembled upon the painted roses on the walls, on the obsolete 
engravings in clumsy frames of imitation-ebony and tarnished 
gilt; the silver tea-service and Sevres china cup and saucer, 
which Mrs. Arundel had sent to the cottage for her son’s use, 
stood upon the small oval table; and a brown setter, a favorite 
of the young man’s, lay upon the hearth-rug, with his chin upon 
his outstretched paws, blinking at the blaze. 

As Mr. Arundel lingered in the door-way, looking at these 
things, an image arose before him, as vivid and distinct as any 
apparition of Professor Pepper’s manufacture; and he thought 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 201 

of what that commonplace cottage-chamber might have been if 
his young wife had lived. He could fancy her bending over 
the low silver tea-pot—the sprawling, inartistic tea-pot, that 
stood upon quaint knobs, like gouty feet, and had been long ago 
banished from the Dangerfield breakfast-table as utterly rococo 
and ridiculous. He conjured up the dear dead face, with faint 
blushes flickering amidst its lily-pallor, and soft hazel eyes look¬ 
ing up at him through the misty steam of the tea-table, inno¬ 
cent and virginal as the eyes of that mythic nymph who was 
wont to appear to the old Roman king. How happy she would 
have been! How willing to give up fortune and station, and to 
have lived forever and ever in that queer old cottage, minister¬ 
ing to him and loving him. 

Presently the face changed. The hazel-brown hair was sud¬ 
denly lit up with a glitter of barbaric gold; the hazel eyes grew 
blue and bright; and the cheeks blushed rosy-red. The young 
man frowned at this new and brighter vision; but he contem¬ 
plated it gravely for some moments, and then breathed a long 
sigh, which was somehow or other expressive of relief. 

“ No,” he said to himself, “ I am not false to my poor lost girl; 
I do not forget her. Her image is dearer to me than any living 
creature. The mournful shadow of her face is more precious to 
me than the brightest reality.” 

He sat down in one of the spindle-legged arm-chairs, and 
poured out a cup of tea. He drank it slowly, brooding over the 
fire as he sipped the innocuous beverage, and did not deign to 
notice the caresses of the brown setter, who laid his cold wet 
nose in his master’s hand by way of a delicate attention. 

After tea the young man rang the bell, which was answered 
by Mr. Morrison. 

“Have I any clothes that I can hunt in, Morrison?” Mr. 
Arundel asked. 

His factotum stared aghast at this question. 

“ You ain’t a-goin to ’unt, are you, Mr. Edward?”he inquired, 
anxiously. 

“ Never mind that. I asked you a question about my clothes, 
and I want a straightforward answer.” 

“ But, Mr. Edward,” remonstrated the old servant, “ I don’t 
mean no offense; and the ’orses is very tidy animals in their way; 
but if you’re thinkin’ of going across country—and a pretty stiffish 
country too, as I’ve heard, in the way of bull-finches and timber 
—neither cf them ’orses has any more of a hunter in him than 
I have.” 

“ I know them as well as you do,” Edward Arundel answered, 
coolly; “but I am going to the meet at Marchmont Towers to¬ 
morrow morning, and I want you to look me out a decent suit 
of clothes; that’s all. You can have Desperado saddled and 
ready for me a little after eleven o’clock.” 

Mr. Morrison looked even more astonished than before. He 
knew his master’s savage enmity toward Paul Marchmont; and 
yet that very master now deliberately talked of joining in an 
assembly which was to gather together for the special purpose 
of doing the same Paul Marchmont honor. However, as he 


252 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


afterward remarked to the two fellow-servants with whom he 
sometimes condescended to be familiar, “ it wasn’t his place to 
interfere or to ask any questions,” and he had held his tongue 
accordingly. 

Perhaps this respectful reticence was rather the result of pru¬ 
dence than of inclination; for there was a dangerous light in 
Edward Arundel’s eyes upon this particular evening which Mr. 
Morrison never had observed before. 

The factotum said something about this later in the evening. 

“I do really think,” he remarked, “that, what with that 
young ’ooman’s death, and the solitood of this most dismal 
place, and the rainy weather—which as those as says it always 
rains in Lincolnshire ain’t far out—my pore young master is 
not the man he were.” 

He tapped his forehead ominously to give significance to his 
words, and sighed heavily over his supper-beer. 

******* 

The sun shone upon Paul Marchmont on the morning of the 
18th of October. The glorious autumn sunshine streamed into 
his gorgeous bedchamber—which had been luxuriously fitted for 
him under his own superintendence—and awoke the new master 
of Marchmont Towers. He opened his eyes and looked about 
him. He raised himself among the down-pillows, and contem¬ 
plated the figures upon the tapestry in a drowsy reverie. He 

d been dreaming of his poverty, and had been disputing a 
poor-rate summons with an impertinent tax-collector in the 
dingy passage of the house in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. 
Ah! that horrible house had so long been the only scene of his 
life that it had grown almost a part of his mind, and haunted 
him perpetually in his sleep, like a nightmare of brick and 
mortar, now that he was rich, and done with it forever. 

Mr. Marchmont gave a faint shudder, and shook off the influ¬ 
ence of the bad dream. Then, propped up by the pillows, he 
amused himself by admiring his new bedchamber. 

It was a handsome room, certainly; the very room for an 
artist and a sybarite. Mr. Marchmont had not chosen it with¬ 
out due consideration. It was situated in an angle of the house; 
and though its chief windows looked westward, being immedi¬ 
ately above those of the western drawing-room, there was an¬ 
other casement, a great oriel window, facing the east, and ad¬ 
mitting all the grandeur of the morning sun through painted 
glass, on which the Marchmont escutcheon was represented in 
gorgeous hues of sapphire and ruby, emerald and topaz, ame¬ 
thyst and aqua marina. Bright splashes of these colors flashed 
and sparkled on the polished oaken floor, and mixed themselves 
with the oriental gaudiness of a Persian carpet, stretched be¬ 
neath the low Arabian bed, which was hung with ruby-colored 
draperies that trailed upon the ground. Paul Marchmont was 
fond of splendor, and meant to have as much of it as money 
could buy. There was a voluptuous pleasure in all this finery, 
which only a parvenu could feel; it was the sharpness of the 
contrast between the magnificence of the present and the shabby 


JOHN MAUCmWNT'S LEGACY. 259 

miseries of the past that gave a poignancy to the artist’s eniov- 
ment of his new habitation. * 

All the furniture and draperies of the chamber had been made 
by Paul Marcbmont’s direction; but its chief beauty was the 
tapestry that covered, the walls, which had been worked three 
hundred years before, by a patient chatelaine of the house of 
Marchmont. This tapestry lined the room on every side. The 
low door had been cut in it; so that a stranger going into that 
apartment at night, a little under the influence of the March¬ 
mont cellars, and unable to register the topography of the 
chamber upon the tablet of his memory, might have been sorely 
puzzled to find an exit the next morning. Most tapestried 
chambers have a certain dismal grimness about them, which is 
more pleasant to the sight seer than to the constant inhabitant; 
but in this tapestry the colors were almost as bright and glow¬ 
ing to-day as when the fingers (hat had handled the variegated 
worsteds were still warm and flexible. The subjects, too, were 
of a more pleasant order than usual. No mailed ruffians or 
drapery-clad barbarians menaced the unoffending sleeper with 
uplifted clubs, or horrible bolts, in the very act of being launched 
from ponderous cross-bows; no wicked-looking Saracens, with 
ferocious eyes and copper-colored visages, brandished murder¬ 
ous cimeters above their turbaned heads. No; here all was pas¬ 
toral gayety and peaceful delight. Maidens, with flowing kir 
ties and crisped yellow hair, danced before great wagons loaded 
with golden wheat. Youths, in red and purple jerkins, frisked 
as they played the pipe and tabor. The Flemish horses drag¬ 
ging the heavy wain were hung with bells and garlands, as for 
a rustic festival, and tossed their untrimmed manes into the air, 
and frisked and gamboled with their awkward legs, in ponder¬ 
ous imitation of the youths and maidens. Afar off in the dis¬ 
tance wonderful villages, very queer as to perspective, but all 
a-bloom with gaudy flowers and quaint roofs of bright red tiles, 
stood boldly out against a bluer sky than the most enthusiastic 
pre-Raphaelite of to-day would care to send to the academy in 
Trafalgar Square. 

Paul Marchmont smiled at the youths and maidens, the laden 
wagons, the revelers, and the impossible village. He was in 
a humor to be pleased with everything to-day. He looked at 
his dressing-table, which stood opposite to him, in the deep oriel 
window. His valet—he had a valet now—bad opened the great 
inlaid dressing-case, and the silver gilt fittings reflected the 
crimson hues of the velvet lining, as if the gold had been flecked 
with blood. Glittering bottles of diamond-cut glass, that pre¬ 
sented a thousand facets to the morning light, stood like crystal 
obelisks amidst the litter of carved ivory brushes, and Sevres 
boxes of pomatum; and one rare hot-house flower, white and 
fragile, peeped out of a slender crystal vase, against a back¬ 
ground of dark shining leaves. 

“ It’s better than Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square,” said Mr. 
Marchmont, throwing himself back among the pillows until 
such time as his valet should bring him a cup of strong tea to 
refresh and invigorate his nerves withal. “I remember the 


254 


JOHN MAECHMONT'S LEGACY. 


paper in my room: drab hexagons and yellow spots upon a 
brown ground. So pretty! And then the dressing-table: deal, 
gracefully designed; with a shallow drawer that very rarely 
would consent to come out, and which, when out, had an in¬ 
surmountable objection to going in again; a most delicious 
table, exquisitely painted in stripes, olive green upon stone color, 
picked out with the favorite brown. Oh, it was a most delight¬ 
ful life; but it’s over, thank Providence; it’s over!'’ 

Mr. Paul Marchmont thanked Providence as devoutly as if he 
had been the most patient attendant upon the divine pleasure, 
and had never for one moment dreamed of intruding his own 
impious handiwork amidst the mysterious designs of Omnipo¬ 
tence. 

The sun shone upon the new master of Marchmont Towers. 
This bright October morning was not the very best for hunting 
purposes; for there was a fresh breeze blowing from the north, 
and a blue unclouded sky. But it was most delightful weather 
for the breakfast, and the assembling on the lawn, and all the 
pleasant preliminaries of the day’s sport. Mr. Paul Marchmont, 
who was a thoroughbred cockney, troubled himself very little 
about the hunt as he basked in that morning light. He only 
thought that the sun was shining upon him, and that he had 
come at last—no matter by what crooked ways—to the realiza¬ 
tion of his great day-dream; and that he was to be happy and 
prosperous for the rest of bis life. 

He drank his tea, and then got up and dressed himself. He 
wore the conventional “pink,” the whitest buckskins, the most 
approved boots and tops; and he admired himself very much in 
the cheval glass when this toilet was complete. He had put on 
the dress for the gratification of his vanity, rather than from 
any serious intention of doing what he was about as incapable of 
doing as he was of becoming a modern Rubens or a new Raphael. 
He would receive his friends in this costume, and ride to cover, 
and follow the hounds, perhaps—a little way. At any rate, it 
was very delightful to him to play the country gentleman; and 
he had never felt so much a country gentleman as at this mo¬ 
ment, when he contemplated himself from head to heel in his 
hunting costume. 

At ten o’clock the guests began to assemble; the meet was not 
to take place until twelve, so that there might be plenty of time 
for the breakfast. 

I don’t think Paul Marchmont ever really knew what took 
place at that long table at which he sat for the first time in the 
place of host and master. He was intoxicated from the first 
with a sense of triumph and delight in his new position; and he 
drank a grea,t deal, for he drank unconsciously, emptying his 
glass every time it was filled, and never knowing who filled it, 
or what was put into it. By this means he took a very consid 
erable quantity of various sparkling and effervescing wines; 
sometimes hock, sometimes Moselle, very often champagne, to 
say nothing of a steady undercurrent of unpronounceable Ger¬ 
man hocks and crusted Burgundies. But he was not drunk 
after the common fashion of mortals; he could not be upon this 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEO ACT. 


255 


particular day. He was not stupid, or drowsy, or unsteady 
upon bis legs; he was only preternaturally excited, looking at 
everything through a haze of dazzling light, as if all the gold of 
his newly acquired fortune had been melted into the atmos¬ 
phere. 

He knew that the breakfast was a great success; that the long 
table was spread with every delicious comestible that the science 
of a first-rate cook, to say nothing of Fortnum & Mason, could 
devise; that the profusion of splendid silver, the costly china, 
the hot-house flowers, and the sunshine, made a confused mass 
of restless glitter and glowing color that dazzled his eyes as he 
looked at it. He knew that everybody courted and flattered 
him; and that he was almost stifled by the overpowering sense 
of his own grandeur. Perhaps he felt this most when a certain 
county magnate, a baronet, member of Parliament, and great 
landowner, rose—primed with champagne, and rather thicker 
of utterance than a man should be who means to be in at the 
death, by and by—and took the opportunity of—hum—express¬ 
ing, in a few words—haw—the very great pleasure which he— 
aw, yes—and he thought he might venture to remark—aw— 
everybody about him—ha—felt on this most—arrah, arrah—in¬ 
teresting—er—occasion; and said a great deal more, which 
took a very long time to say, but the gist of which was, 
that all these country gentlemen were so enraptured by the new 
addition to their circle, and so altogether delighted with Mr. 
Paul Marchmont, that they really were at a loss to understand 
how it was that they had ever managed to endure existence 
without him. 

And then there was a good deal of rather unnecessary but 
very enthusiastic thumping of the table, whereat the costly 
glass shivered, and the hot-house blossoms trembled amidst the 
musical chinking of silver forks, while the fox-hunters declared 
in chorus that the new owner of Marchmont Towers was a jolly 
good fellow, which—viz., the fact of his jollity—nobody could 
deny. 

It was not a very refined demonstration, but it was a very 
hearty one. Moreover, these noisy fox-hunters were all men of 
some standing in the county; and it is a proof of the artist’s in¬ 
herent snobbery that to him the husky voices of these half- 
drunken men were more delicious than the sweet soprano tones 
of an equal number of Pattis—penniless and obscure Pattis, that 
is to say—sounding his praises. He was lifted at last out of that 
poor artist-life, in which he had always been a groveler—not for 
lack of talent, but by reason of the smallness of his own soul— 
into a new sphere, where everybody was rich and grand and 
prosperous; and where the pleasant pathways were upon the 
neck of prostrate slaves, in the shape of grooms and hirelings, 
respectful servants, and reverential trades-people! 

Yes; Paul Marchmont was more ‘drunken than any of his 
guests; but his drunkenness was of of a different kind to theirs. 
It was not the wine, but his own grandeur that intoxicated and 
besotted him. 

These fox hunters might get the better of their drunkenness 


JO BN MARCBMONVS LEGACY. 


m 

in half an hour or so; but his intoxication was likely to last for 
a very long time, unless be should receive some sudden shock, 
powerful enough to sober him. The hounds were yelping and 
baying upon the lawn, and the huntsmen and whippers-in were 
running backward and forward from the lawn to the servants’ 
hall, devouring snacks of beef and ham—a pound and a quarter 
or so at one sitting; or crunching the bones of a frivolous young 
chicken—there were not half a dozen mouthfuls on such insig¬ 
nificant, half-grown fowls; or excavating under the roof of a 
great game-pie; or drinking a quart or so of strong ale, or half 
a tumbler of raw brandy, en passant; and doing a great deal 
more in the same way, merely to beguile the time until the gen¬ 
tlefolks should appear upon the broad stone terrace. 

It was half-past twelve o’clock, and Mr. Marchmont’s guests 
were still drinking and speechifying. They had been on the 
point of making a move ever so many times; but it had hap¬ 
pened that each time some gentleman, who had been very quiet 
until that moment, suddenly got upon his legs, and began to 
cling convulsively to the neck of a half empty champagne-bot¬ 
tle, and to make swallowing and gasping noises, and to wipe his 
lips with a napkin; whereby it was understood that he was 
going to propose somebody’s health. This had considerably 
lengthened the entertainment, and it seemed rather likely that 
the ostensible business of the day would be forgotten altogether. 
One gentleman, indeed, huskier than his neighbors, had been 
heard to mutter something about billiards and soda-water; and 
another, who was thick of speech, but not husky, and who had 
shed tears in proposing an unintelligible toast—which was sup¬ 
posed to be the health of her gracious majesty—suggested a 
stretch on the sofa, and the removal of his boots. At last, at 
half-past twelve, the county magnate, who had bidden Paul 
Marcbmont a stately welcome to Lincolnshire, remembered that 
there were twenty couple of impatient hounds scratching up the 
turf in front of the long windows of the banquet-chamber, 
while as many .eager young tenant farmers, stalwart yoemen, 
well-to-do butchers, and a herd of tagrag and bobtail, were pin¬ 
ing for the sport to begin—at last, I say, Sir Lionel Boport 
remembered this, and led the way to the terrace, leaving the 
renegades to repose on the comfortable sofas lurking here and 
there in the spacious rooms. Then the grim stone front of the 
house was suddenly lighted up into splendor. The long terrace 
was one blaze of pink, relieved here and there by patches of 
sober black and forester’s green. Among all these stalwart, 
florid-visaged country-gentlemen, Paul Marchmont, very ele¬ 
gant, very picturesque, but extremely unsportsman-like, the 
hero of the hour, walked slowly down the broad stone steps 
amidst the vociferous cheering of the crowd, the snapping 
and yelping of impatient^ hounds, and the distant braving of a 
horn. 

It was the crowning moment of his life; the moment he had 
dreamed of again and again in the wretched days of poverty 
and obscurity. The scene was scarcely new to him—he had 
acted it so often in his imagination; he had heard the shouts 


257 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

and seen the respectful crowd. There was a little difference in 
detail—that was all. There was no disappointment, no short¬ 
coming in the realization, as there so often is when our brightest 
dreams are fulfilled, and the one great good, the all-desired, is 
granted to us. No; the prize was his, and it was worth all that 
he had sacrificed to win it. 

He looked up and saw his mother and his sisters in the great 
window over the porch. He could see the exultant pride in his 
mother’s pale face; and the one redeeming sentiment of his 
nature, his love for the womankind who depended upon him, 
stirred faintly in his breast, amidst the tumult of gratified am¬ 
bition and selfish joy. 

This one drop of unselfish pleasure filled the cup to the brim. 
He took off his hat and waved it high up above his head in an¬ 
swer to the shouting of the crowd. He had stopped half-way 
down the flight of steps to bow his acknowledgment of the 
cheering. He waved his hat, and the huzzas grew still louder; 
and a band upon the other side of the lawn played that fa¬ 
miliar and triumphant march which is supposed to apply to 
every living hero, from a Wellington just come home from 
Waterloo to the winner of a boat-race, or a patent-starch pro¬ 
prietor newly elected by an admiring constituency. 

There was nothing wanting. I think that in that supreme mo¬ 
ment Paul Marchmont quite forgot the tortuous and perilous 
ways by which he had reached this all-giorious goal. I don’t 
suppose the young princes, smothered in the Tower, were ever 
more palpably present in tyrant Richard’s memory than 
when the murderous usurper groveled in Bosworth’s miry 
clay, and knew that the great game of life was lost. It was 
only when Henry the Eighth took away the great seal that 
Wolsey was able to see the foolishness of man’s ambition. In 
that moment memory and conscience, nev^er very wakeful in 
the breast of Paul Marchmont, were dead asleep, and only 
triumph and delight reigned in their stead. No: there was 
nothing wanting. This glory and grandeur paid him a thou¬ 
sand fold for his patience and self-abnegation during the past 
year. He turned half round to look up at those eager watchers 
at the window. 

Good God! It was his sister Lavinia’s face he saw; no 
longer full of triumph and pleasure, but ghastly pale, and star¬ 
ing at some one or something horrible in the crowd. Paul 
Marchmont turned to look for this horrible something, the sight 
of which had power to change his sister’s face; and found him¬ 
self confronted by a young man whose eyes flamed like coals of 
fire; whose cheeks were as white as a sheet of paper; and whose 
firm lips were locked as tightly as if they had been chiseled 
out of a block of granite. 

This man was Edward Arundel—the young widower, the 
handsome soldier—whom everybody remembered as the hus¬ 
band of poor lost Mary Marchmont. 

He had sprung out from amidst the crowd only one moment 
before, and had dashed up the steps of the terrace before any one 
had time to think of hindering him or interfering with him, It 


258 JOHN MARCIIMONT ’S LEGACY. 

seemed to Paul Marchmont as if he must have leaped out bf thft 
solid earth, so sudden and so unlooked-for was his coming. He 
stood upon the steps immediately below the artist, but as the 
terrace steps were shallow, and as he was taller by half a foot 
than Paul, the faces of the men were level, and they confronted 
each other. 

The soldier held a heavy hunting-whip in his hand, no foppish 
toy with a golden trinket for its head, but a stout handle of 
stag-horn, and a formidable leathern thong. He held this whip 
in his strong right hand, with the thong twisted round the 
handle; and throwing out his left arm, nervous and muscular 
as the limb of a young gladiator, he seized Paul Marchmont by 
the collar of that fashionably-cut scarlet coat which the artist 
had so much admired in the cheval glass that morning. 

There was a shout of surprise and consternation from the gen¬ 
tlemen; on the terrace and the crowd upon the lawn, a shrill 
scream from the women, and in the next moment Paul March¬ 
mont vras writhing under a shower of blows from the hunting- 
whip in Edward Arundel’s hand. The artist was not physically 
brave, yet he was not such a cur as to submit unresistingly to 
this hideous disgrace; but the attack was so sudden and unex¬ 
pected as to paralyze him; so rapid in its execution as to leave 
him no time for resistance. Before he had recovered his pres¬ 
ence of mind; before he knew the meaning of Edward Arundel’s 
appearance in that place; even before he could fully realize the 
mere fact of his being there—the thing was done; he was dis¬ 
graced forever. He had sunk in that one moment from the very 
height of his new grandeur to the lowest depth of social degra¬ 
dation. 

“Gentlemen!” Edward Arundel cried, in a loud voice, which 
was distinctly heard by every member of the gasping crowd, 
“ when the law of the land suffers a scoundrel to prosper, hon¬ 
est men must take the law into their own hands. I wished you 
to know my opinion of the new master of Marchmont Towers; 
and 1 think I’ve expressed it pretty clearly. I know him to be a 
most consummate villain; and I give you fair warning that he 
is no fit associate for honorable men. Good-morning!” 

Edw r ard Arundel lifted his hat, bowed to the assembly, and 
then ran down the steps. Paul Marchmont, livid, and foaming 
at the mouth, rushed after him, brandishing his clinched fists, 
and gesticulating in impotent rage; but the young man’s horse 
was waiting for him at a few paces from the terrace, in the care 
of a butcher’s apprentice, and he w as in the saddle before the 
artist could overtake him. 

“ I shall not leave Kemberling for a week, Mr. Marchmont,” 
he called out; and then he walked his horse away, holding him¬ 
self erect as a dart, and staring defiance in the crowd. 

I am sorry to have to testify to the fickle nature of the Brit¬ 
ish populace; but I am bound to own that a great many of the 
stalwart yeomen who had eaten game-pies and drunk strong 
liquors at Paul .Marchmont’s expense not half an hour before, 
w T ere base enough to feel an involuntary admiration for Edw r ard 
Arundel, as he rode slowly away, with his head up and his e^ea 


JOHN MARCHMOKTS LEGACY. 


259 


flaming. There is seldom very much genuine sympathy for a 
man who has been horsewhipped: and there is a pretty universal 
inclination to believe that the man who inflicts chastisement 
upon him must be right in the main. It is true that the tenant 
farmers, especially those whose leases were nearly run out, 
were very loud in their indignation against Mr. Arundel, and 
one adventurous spirit made a dash at the young man’s bridle 
as he went by; but the general feeling was in favor of the con¬ 
queror, and there was a lack of heartiness even in the loudest 
expressions of sympathy. 

The crowd made a lane for Paul Marchmont as he went back 
to the house, white and helpless, and sick with shame. 

Several of the gentlemen upon the terrace came forward to 
shake hands with him, and to express their indignation, and to 
offer any friendly service that he might require of them by and 
by—such as standing by to see him shot, if he should choose an 
old-fashioned mode of retaliation; or bearing witness against 
Edward Arundel in a law-court, if Mr. Marchmont preferred to 
take legal measures. But even these men-recoiled when they 
felt the cold dampness of the artist’s hands, and saw that he had 
been frightened. These sturdy uproarious fox-hunters who 
braved the peril of sudden death every time they took a day’s 
sport, entertained a sovereign contempt for a man who could 
be frightened of anybody or anything. They made no allow¬ 
ance for Paul Marchmont’s cockney education; they were not 
in the dark secrets of his life, and knew nothing of his guilty 
conscience; and it was that which had made him more helpless 
than a child in the fierce grasp of Ed ward Arundel. 

So, one by one, after this polite show of sympathy, the rich 
man’s guests fell away from him; and the yelping hounds and 
the cantering horses left the lawn before Marchmont Towers; 
the sound of the brass band and the voices of the people died 
away in the distance; and the glory of the day was done. 

Paul Marchmont crawled slowly back to that luxurious bed¬ 
chamber which he had left only a few hours before, and, throw¬ 
ing himself at full length upon the bed, sobbed like a frightened 
child. 

He was panic-stricken; not because of the horsewhipping, but 
because of a sentence that Edward Arundel had whispered 
close to his ear in the midst of the struggle. 

“ I know everything the young man had said. “ I know the 
secrets you hide in the pavilion by the river.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE DESERTED CHAMBERS. 

Edward Arundel kept his word. He waited for a week and 
upward, but Paul Marchmont made no sign; and after haying 
given him three days’ grace over and above the promised time, 
the young man abandoned Kemberling Retreat, forever, as he 
thought, and went away from Lincolnshire. 

He had waited, hoping that Paul Marchmont would try to re¬ 
taliate, and that some desperate struggle, physical or legal—he 



§60 


JOHN MARCBMONT'S LEGACY. 


scarcely cared which—would occur between them. He would 
have courted any hazard which might have given him some 
chance of revenge. But nothing happened. He sent out Mr. 
Morrison to beat up information about the master of March- 
mont Towers, and the factotum came back with the intelligence 
that Mr. Marchmont was ill, and would see no one—“ least- 
ways” excepting his mother and Mr. George Weston. 

Edward Arundel shrugged his shoulders when he heard these 
tidings. 

“ What a contemptible cur the man is!” he thought. “ There 
--was a time when I could have suspected him of any foul play 
against my lost girl. I know him better now, and know that 
he is not even capable of a great crime. He was only strong 
enough to stab his victim in the dark, with lying paragraphs in 
newspapers, and dastardly hints and innuendoes for his weap¬ 
ons.” 

It would have been only perhaps an act of ordinary politeness 
had Edward Arundel paid a farewell visit to his friends at the 
Grange. But he did not go near the hospitable old house. He 
contented himself with writing a cordial letter to Major Law- 
ford, thanking him for his hospitality and kindness, and refer¬ 
ring, vaguely enough, to the hope of a future meeting. 

He dispatched this letter by Mr. Morrison, who was in very 
high spirits at the prospect of leaving Kemberling, and who 
went about his work with almost a boyish activity in the ex¬ 
uberance of his delight. He worked so briskly as to com¬ 
plete all necessary arrangements in a couple of days; and on 
the 29th of October, late in the afternoon, all was ready, and 
Mr. Morrison had nothing to do but to superintend the de¬ 
parture of the two horses from the Kemberling railway station 
under the guardianship of the lad who had served as Edward’s 
groom. 

Throughout that last day Mr. Arundel wandered here and 
there about the house and garden that so soon were to be de¬ 
serted. He was dreadfully at a loss what to do with himself, 
and, alas! it was not to-day only that he felt the burden of his 
hopeless idleness. He felt it always; a horrible load, not to be 
cast away from him. His life had been broken off short, as it 
were, by the catastrophe which had left him a widower before 
his honeymoon was well over. The story of his existence was 
abruptly broken asunder; all the belter part of his life was 
taken away from him, and he did not know what to do with the 
blank and useless remnant. The raveled threads of a once har¬ 
monious web suddenly wrenched in twain, presented a mass of 
inextricable confusion; and the young man’s brain grew dizzy 
when he tried to draw them out, or to consider them separately. 

His life was most miserable, most hopeless, by reason of its 
emptiness. He had no duty to perform, no task to achieve. 
That nature must be utterly selfish, entirely given over to 
sybarite rest and self-indulgence, which does not feel a lack of 
something, wanting these—a duty or a purpose. Better to be 
Sisyphus toiling up the mountain-side, than Sisyphus with the 
Stone taken aw r ay from him, and no hope of ever reaching the 


JOHN MARCIIMONT ’£ LEGACY. 261 

top. I heard a man once—a bill-sticker, and not by any means 
a sentimental or philosophical person—declare that he had never 
known real prosperity until he had thirteen orphan grandchil¬ 
dren to support; and surely there was a universal moral iD that 
bill-sticker’s confession. He had been a drunkard before, per¬ 
haps—he didn’t say anything about that—and a reprobate, it 
may be; but those thirteen small mouths clamoring for food 
made him sober and earnest, brave and true. He had a duty to 
do, and was happy in its performance. He was wanted in the 
world, and he was somebody. From Napoleon IIT., seated in 
that Spartan chamber at Vichy, holding the destinies of civilized 
Europe in his hands, and debating whether he shall recreate Po¬ 
land, or build a new boulevard, to paterfamilias in a Govern¬ 
ment office, working for the little ones at home—and from 
paterfamilias to the crossing-sweeper, who craves his diurnal 
half-penny from busy citizens, tramping to their daily toil— 
every man has his separate labor and his different responsibility. 
Forever and forever the busy wheel of life turns round; but 
duty and ambition are the motive powers that keep it going. 

Edward Arundel felt the barrenness of his life now that he 
had taken the only revenge which was possible for him upon 
the man who had persecuted his wife. That had been a raptur¬ 
ous but brief enjoyment. It Was over. He could do no more to 
the man, since there was no lower depth of humiliation—in 
these later days, when pillories, and whipping-posts, and stocks 
are exploded from our market-places—to which a degraded 
creature could descend. No; there was no more to be done. 
It was useless to stop in Lincolnshire. The sad suggestion of 
the little slipper found by the water-side was but too true. Paul 
Marchmont had not murdered his helpless cousin: he had only 
tortured her to death. He was quite safe from the law of the 
land, which, being of a positive and arbitrary nature, takes no 
cognizance of indefinable offenses. This most infamous man 
was safe, and was free to enjoy his ill gotten grandeur—if he 
could take much pleasure in it, after the scene upon the stone 
terrace. 

The only joy that had been left for Edward Arundel after his 
retirement from the East India Company’s service was this 
fierce delight of vengeance. He had drained the intoxicating 
cup to the dregs, and had been drunken at first in the sense of 
his triumph. But he was sober now; and he paced up and 
down the neglected garden beneath a chill October sky, crunch¬ 
ing the fallen leaves under his feet, with his arms folded and 
his head bent, thinking of the barren future. It was all bare— 
a blank stretch of desert land, with no city in the distance; no 
purple domes or airy minarets on the horizon. It was in the 
very nature of this young man to be a soldier; and he was noth- 
ing*if not a soldier. He could never remember having had any 
other aspiration than that eager thirst for military glory. Be¬ 
fore he knew the meaning of the word “war,” in his very in¬ 
fancy, the sound of a trumpet or the sight of a waving banner, 
a glittering weapon, a sentinel’s scarlet coat, had moved him to 
a kind of rapture. The unvarnished school-room records of 


262 JOHN MARCH MONT’S LEGACY. 

Greek and Roman warfare had been as delightful to him as the 
finest passages of a Macaulay or a Froude, a Thiers or Lamar¬ 
tine. He was a soldier by the inspiration of Heaven, as all 
great soldiers are. He had never known any other ambition, or 
dreamed any other dream. Other lads had talked of the bar, 
and the senate and their glories. Bah! how cold and tame they 
seemed! What was the glory of a parliamentary triumph, in 
which words were the only weapons wielded by the combatants, 
compared to a hand-to-hand struggle, ankle-deep in the bloody 
mire of a crowded trench, or a cavalry charge, before which a 
phalanx of fierce Afghans fled like frightened sheep upon a 
moor. Edward Arundel was a soldier, like the Duke of Wel¬ 
lington or Sir Colin Campbell—one writes the old name in¬ 
voluntarily, because one loves it best—or Othello. The Moor's 
first lamentation when he believes Desdemona is false, and his 
life is broken, is that sublime farewell to all the glories of the 
battle-field. It was almost the same with Edward Arundel. 
The loss of his wife and of his captaincy were blent and mingled 
in his mind; and he could only bewail the one great loss which 
left life most desolate. 

He had never felt the full extent of his desolation until now, 
for heretofore he had been buoyed up by the hope of vengeance 
upon Paul Marchmont; and now that his solitary hope had been 
realized to the fullest possible extent, there was nothing left— 
nothing but to revoke the sacrifice he had made, and to regain 
his place in the Indian army at any cost. 

He tried not to think of the possibiliiy of this. It seemed to 
him almost an infidelity toward his dead wife in heaven to dream 
of winning honors and distinction, now that she, who would 
have been so proud of any triumph won by him, was forever 
lost. 

So, under the gray October sky, he passed up and down upon 
the grass-grown pathways, amidst the weeds and briars, the 
brambles and broken branches that crackled as he trod upon 
them; and late in the afternoon, when the day, which had been 
sunless and cold, was melting into dusky twilight, he opened 
the low wooden gateway and went out into the road. An im¬ 
pulse which he could not resist took him toward the river bank, 
and the wood behind Marchmont Towers. Once more, for the 
last time in his life, perhaps, he went down to that lonely shore. 
He went to look at the bleak, unlovely place which had been 
the scene of his betrothal. 

It was not that he had any thought of meeting Olivia March¬ 
mont: he had dismissed her from his mind ever since his last visit 
to the lonely boat-house. Whatever the mystery of her life might 
be, her secret lay at the bottom of a black depth which the im¬ 
petuous soldier did not care to fathom. He did not want to dis¬ 
cover that hideous secret. Tarnished honor, shame, falsehood, 
disgrace, lurked in the obscurity in which John Marchmont’s 
widow had chosen to enshroud her life. Let them rest. It was 
not for him to drag away the curtain that sheltered his kins¬ 
woman from the world. 

He had no thought, therefore, of prying into any secrets that 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


£63 

might be hidden in the pavilion by the water. The fascination 
that lured him to the spot was the memory of the past. He 
could not go to Mary’s grave; but be went, in as reverent aspirit 
as he would have gone thither, to the scene of his betrothal, to 
pay his farewell visit to the spot which had been forever hal¬ 
lowed by the confession of her innocent love. 

It was nearly dark when he got to the river-side. He went by 
a path which quite avoided the grounds about Marchmont 
Towers—a narrow foot-path, which served as a towing-path 
sometimes when some black barge crawled by on its way out to 
the open sea. To-night the river was hidden by a mist—a white 
fog—that obscured land and water; and it was only by the sound 
of the horses’ hoofs that Edward Arundel had warning to step 
aside as a string of them went by, dragging a chain that grated 
on the pebbles by the river-side. 

“Why should they say my darling committed suicide?” 
thought Edward Arundel, as he groped his way along the nar¬ 
row pathway; “ it was on such an evening as this that she ran 
away from home. What more likely than that she lost the 
track and wandered into the river? Oh, my own poor lost one, 
God grant it was so! God grant it was by His will, and not 
your own desperate act, that you were lost to me!” 

Sorrowful as the thought of his wife’s death was to him, it 
soothed him to believe that that death might have been acci¬ 
dental. There was all the difference between sorrow and despair 
in the alternative. 

Wandering ignorantly and helplessly through this autumnal 
fog, Edward Arundel found himself at the boat-house before he 
was aware of its vicinity. 

There was a light gleaming from the broad north window of 
the painting-room, and a slanting line of light streamed out of 
the half-open door. In this lighted door-way Edward saw the 
figure of a girl—an unkempt, red-headed girl, with a flat 
freckled face—a girl who wore a lavender-cotton pinafore and 
hobnailed boots, with a good deal of brass about the leather 
fronts, and a redundancy of rusty leather boot lace twisted round 
the ankles. 

The young man remembered having seen this girl once in the 
village of Kemberling. She had been in Mrs. Weston's service 
as a drudge, and was supposed to have received her education 
in the Swampington union. 

This young lady was supporting herself against the half-open 
door, with her arms akimbo, and her hands planted upon her 
hips, in humble imitation of the matrons whom she had been 
wont to see lounging at their cottage doors in the high street of 
Kemberling, when the labors of the day were done. 

Edward Arundel started at the sudden apparition of this 
damsel. 

“ Who are you, girl ?” be asked, “ and what brings you to this 
place ?” 

He trembled as he spoke. A sudden agitation had seized upon 
him, which he had no power to account for. It seemed as if 
Providence had brought him to this spot to-night, and had 


264 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY . 


placed this ignorant country girl in his way for some special 
purpose. Whatever the secrets of this place might be, he was 
to know them, it appeared, since he had been led here, not by 
the promptings of curiosity, but only by a reverent love for a 
scene that was associated with his dead wife. 

“Who are you, girl ?” he asked again. 

“Oi be Bessy Murrel, sir,” the damsel answered; “some on 
’em calls me “Wuk-us Bet;’ and I be coom here to cle-an oop 
a bit.” 

“ To clean up what ?” 

“The paa-intin’ room. There’s a de-al o’ moock about, and 
aw’m to fettle oop, and make all toidy agen t’ squire gets well.” 

“ Are you all alone here?” 

“ All alo-an ? Oh, yes, sir.” 

“ Have you been here long?” 

The girl looked at Mr. Arundel with a cunning leer, which 
was one of her “ wuk-us ” acquirements. 

“ Aw’ve bin here off an’ on ever since t’ squire ke-ame,” she 
said. “ There’s a deal o’ cleanin’ down ’ere.” 

Edward Arundel looked at her sternly; but there was nothing 
to be gathered from her stolid countenance after its agreeable 
leer had melted away. The young man might have scrutinized 
the figure-head of the black barge creeping slowly past upon 
the hidden river with quite as much chance of getting any in¬ 
formation out of its play of feature. 

He walked past the girl into Paul Marchmont’s painting-room. 
Miss Bessy Murrel made no attempt to hinder him. She had 
spoken the truth as to the cleaning of the place, for the room 
smelled of soap-suds, and a pail and a scrubbing-brush stood in 
the middle of the floor. The young man looked at the door be¬ 
hind which he had heard the crying of the child. It was ajar, 
and the stone steps leading up to it were wet, bearing testimony 
to Bessy Murrel’s industry, 

Edward Arundel took the flaming tallow caudle from the table 
in the paioting-room and went up the steps into the pavilion. 
The girl followed, but she did not try to restrain him, or to inter¬ 
fere with him. She followed him with her mouth open, staring 
at him after the manner of her kind, and she looked the very 
image of rustic simplicity. 

With the flaring candle shaded by his left hand, Edward 
Arundel examined the two chambers in the pavilion. There 
was very little to reward his scrutiny. The two small rooms 
were bare and cheerless. The repairs that had been executed 
had only gone so far as to make them tolerably inhabitable, and 
secure from wind and weather. The furniture was the same 
that Edward remembered having seen on his last visit to the 
Towers; for Mary had been fond of sitting in one of the 
little rooms, looking out at the slow river and the trembling 
rushes on the shore. There was no trace of recent occupation 
in the empty rooms, no ashes in the grates. The girl grinned 
maliciously as Mr. Arundel raised the light above his head, 
and looked about him, He walked in and out of the two 
rooms, He stared at the obsolete chairs, the rickety tables, the 


John marchmont's legacy. 


265 


dilapidated damask curtains, flapping every now and then in 
the wind that rushed in through the crannies of the doors and 
windows. He looked here and there, like a man bewildered, 
much to the amusement of Miss Bessy Muriel, who, with her 
arms crossed, and her elbows in the palms of her moist hands, 
followed him backward and forward between the two small 
chambers. 

“ There was some one living here a week ago,” he said; “some 
one who had the care of a-” 

He stopped suddenly. If he had guessed rightly at the dark 
secret, it was better that it should remain forever hidden. This 
girl was perhaps more ignorant than himself. It was not for 
him to enlighten her. 

“ Do you know if anybody has lived here lately ?” he asked. 

Bessy Murrel shook her head. 

“ Nobody has lived here—not that oi knows of,” she replied, 
“not to take their victuals and such loike. Missis brings her 
work down some time, and sits in one of these here rooms, 
while Muster Poll does his pictur’ paa-intin’, that’s all oi knows 
of.” 

Edward went back to the painting-room, and set down his 
candle. The mystery of those empty chambers was no business 
of his. He began to think that his cousin Olivia was mad, and 
that her outburst of terror and agitation had been only the rav¬ 
ing of a mad woman after all. There had been a great deal in 
her manner during the last year that had seemed like insanity. 
The presence of the child might have been purely accidental, 
and his cousin’s wild vehemence only a paroxysm of insanity. 
He sighed as he left Miss Murrel to her scouring. The world 
seemed out of joint, and he whose energetic nature fitted him 
for the straightening of crooked things, had no knowledge of 
the means by which it might be set right. 

“Good-bye, lonely place,” he said; “good-bye to the spot 
where my young wife first told me of her love!” 

He walked back to the cottage, where the bustle of packing 
and preparation was,all over, and where Mr. Morrison was en¬ 
tertaining a select party of friends in the kitchen. Early the 
next morning Mr. Arundel and his servant left Lincolnshire: 
the key of Kemberling Retreat was given up to the landlord, 
and a wooden board, flapping above the dilapidated trellis-work 
of the porch, gave notice that the habitation was to be let. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

TAKING IT QUIETLY. 

All the county, or at least all that part of the county within 
a certain radius of Marchmont Towers, waited very anxiously 
for Mr. Paul Marchmont to make some move. The horse-whip¬ 
ping business had given quite a pleasant zest, a flavor of excite¬ 
ment, a dash of what it is the fashion nowadays to call “sensa¬ 
tion,” to the wind-up of the hunting breakfast. Poor Paul’s 
thrashing had been more racy and appetizing than the finest 
plives that ever grew, and his late guests looked forward to a 



m 


JOHN MARC 11 MONT S LEGACY. 


great deal more excitement and “ sensation ” before the business 
was done with. Of course Paul Marchmont would do some¬ 
thing. He mast make a stir, and the sooner he made it the 
better. Matters would have to be explained. People expected 
to know the cause of Edward Arundel’s enmity; and of course 
the new master of the Towers would see the propriety of setting 
himself right in the eyes of his influential acquaintance, his 
tenantry, and retainers, especially if he contemplated standing 
for Swampington at the next general election. 

This was what people said to each other. The scene at the 
hunting breakfast was a most fertile topic of conversation. It 
was almost as good as a popular murder, and furnished scandal¬ 
ous paragraphs ad infinitum for the provincial^apers, most of 
them beginning, “It is understood-” or “It has been whis¬ 
pered in our hearing that-” or Rochefoucauld has observed 

that-” Everybody expected that Paul Marchmont would 

write to the papers, and that Edward Arundel would answer 
him in the papers; and that a brisk and stirring warfare would 
be carried on in printer’s ink—at least. But no line written by 
either of the gentlemen appeared in any one of the county 
journals; and by slow degrees it dawned upon people that there 
was no further amusement to be got out of Paul’s chastisement, 
and that the master of the Towers meant to take the thing 
quietly, and to swallow the horrible outrage, taking care to hide 
any wry faces he made during that operation. 

Yes; Paul Marchmont let the matter drop. The report was 
circulated that he was very ill, and had suffered from a touch 
of brain fever, which kept him a victim to incessant delirium 
until after Mr. Arundel had left the county. This rumor was 
set afloat by Mr. Weston, the surgeon; and as he was the only 
person admitted to his brother-in-law’s apartment, it was im¬ 
possible for any one to contradict his assertion. 

The fox-hunting squires shrugged their shoulders, and T am 
sorry to say that the epithets “hound,” “cur,” “ sneak,” and 
“ mongrel,” were more often applied to Mr. Marchmont than 
was consistent with Christian feeling on the part of the gentle¬ 
men who uttered them. But a man who can swallow a sound 
thrashing, administered upon his own door-step, has to contend 
with the prejudices of society, and must take the consequences 
of being in advance of his age. 

So, while his neighbors talked about him, Paul Marchmont 
lay in his splendid chamber, with the frisking youths and maid¬ 
ens staring at him all day long, and simpering at him 'with their 
unchanging faces, until he grew sick at heart, and began to 
loath all this new grandeur, which had so delighted him a little 
time ago. He no longer laughed at the recollection of shabby 
Charlotte Street. He dreamed one night that he was back again 
in the old bedroom, with the painted deal furniture, and the 
hideous paper on the walls, and that the Marchmont Towers 
magnificence had been only a feverish vision; and he was glad 
to be back in the familiar place, and was sorry on awaking to 
find that Marchmont Towers was a splendid reality. 

There was only one faint red streak upon his shoulders; for 


JOHN MARCH MONT’S LEGACY. 


26 ' 


the thrashing had not been a brutal one. It was disgrace Ed¬ 
ward Arundel had wanted to inflict, not physical pain, the 
commonplace punishment with which a man corrects his re¬ 
fractory horse. The lash of the hunting whip had done very 
little damage to the artist’s flesh; but it had slashed away his 
manhood, as the sickle sweeps the flowers amidst the corn. 

He could never look up again. The thought of going out of 
this house for the first time, and the horror of confronting the 
altered faces of his neighbors, was as dreadful to him as the an¬ 
ticipation of that awful exit from the Debtor’s Door, which is 
the last step but one into eternity, must be to the condemned 
criminal. 

“ I shall go abroad,” he said to his mother, when he made his 
appearance in the western drawing-room, a week after Edward’s 
departure. “ I shall go on the Continent, mother; I have taken 
a dislike to this place since that savage attacked me the other 
day.” 

Mrs. Marchmont sighed. 

“ It will seem hard to lose you, Paul, now that you are rich. 
You were so constant to us through all our poverty; and -we 
might be so happy together now.” 

The artist was walking up and down the room, with his hands 
in the pockets of his braided velvet coat. He knew that in the 
conventional costume of a well-bred gentleman he showed to a 
disadvantage among other men; and he affected a picturesque 
and artistic style of dress, whose brighter hues and looser out¬ 
lines lighted up his pale face, and gave a grace to his spare 
figure. 

“You think it worth something, then, mother?” he said, 
presently, half-kneeling, half-lounging in a deep cushioned 
easy-chair near the table at which his mother sat. “You 
think our money is worth something to us? All these chairs 
and tables, this great rambling house, the servants who wait 
upon us, and the carriages we ride in. are worth something, 
are they not? they make us happier, I suppose. I know I al¬ 
ways thought such things made up the sum of happiness 
when I was poor. I have seen a hearse going away from a rich 
man’s door, carrying his cherished wife or his only son, per¬ 
haps; and I’ve thought, ‘ Ah! but he has forty thousand a year!’ 
You are happier here than you were in Charlotte Street—eh, 
mother ?” 

Mrs. Marchmont was a Frenchwoman by birth, though she 
had lived so long in London as to become Anglicized. She only 
retained a slight accent of her native tongue, and a good deal 
more vivacity of look and gesture than is common to English¬ 
women. Her eldest daughter was sitting on the other side of 
the broad fireplace. She was only a quieter and older likeness 
of Lavinia Weston. 

“Am I happier?” exclaimed Mrs. Marchmont. “Need you 
ask me the question, Paul ? But it is not so much for myself 
as for your sake that I value all this grandeur.” 

She held out her long thin hand, which was covered with 
rings, some old-fashioned and comparatively valueless, others 


m JOHN MARCffMONT’S LEG AC V. 

lately purchased by her devoted son, and very precious. The 
artist took the shrunken fingers in his own and raised them to 
his lips. 

“ I’m very glad that I’ve made you happy, mother,’ be said; 
“ that’s something gained, at any rate.” 

He left the fireplace, and walked slowly up and down the 
room, stopping now and then to look out at the wintry sky, or 
the flat expanse of turf below it; but he was quite a different 
creature to that which he had been before his encounter with 
Edward Arundel, The chairs and tables palled upon him. The 
mossy velvet pile of the new carpets seemed to him like the 
swampy ground of a morass. The dark green draperies of 
Genoa velvet deepened into black with the growing twilight, 
and seemed as if they had been fashioned out of palls. 

What was it worth, this fine house, with the broad flat before 
it? Nothing, if he had lost the respect and consideration of his 
neighbors. He wanted to be a great man as well as a rich one. 
He wanted admiration and flattery, reverence and esteem; not 
from poor people, whose esteem and admiration were scarcely 
worth having, but from wealthy squires, his equals or his su¬ 
periors by birth and fortune. He ground his teeth at the 
thought of his disgrace. He had drunk of the cup of triumph, 
and had tasted the very wine of life, and at the moment when 
that cup was fullest it "bad been snatched away from him by the 
ruthless hand of his enemy. 

Christmas came, and gave Paul Marchmont a good opportu¬ 
nity of playing the country gentleman of the olden time. W T hat 
was the cost of a couple of bullocks, a few hogsheads of ale, 
and a wagon-load of coals, if by such a sacrifice the master of 
the Towers could secure for himself the admiration due to a 
public benefactor? Paul gave carte blanche to the old servants; 
and tents were erected on the lawn, and monstrous bonfires 
blazed briskly in the frosty air, while the populace, who would 
have accepted the bounties of a new Nero fresh from the burn¬ 
ing of a modern Rome, drank to the health of their benefac¬ 
tor, and warmed themselves by the unlimited consumption of 
strong beer. 

Mrs. Marchmont and her invalid daughter assisted Paul in his 
attempt to regain the popularity he had lost upon the steps of 
the western terrace. The two women distributed square miles 
of flannel and blanketing among greedy claimants; they gave 
scarlet cloaks and poke bonnets to old women, they gave an in¬ 
sipid feast upon temperance principles to the children of the 
National Schools. And they had their reward; for people be¬ 
gan to say that this Paul Marchmont was a very noble fellow 
after all, by Jove, sir! and that fellow Arundel must have been 
in the wrong, sir, and no doubt Marchmont had his own reasons 
for not resenting the outrage, sir, and a great deal more to the 
like effect. 

After this roasting of the two bullocks the wind changed al¬ 
together. Mr. Marchmont gave a great dinner-party upon 
New Year’s Day, He sent out thirty invitations, and had only 
two refusals, So the long dining-room was filled with $11 the 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 269 

notabilities of the district, and Paul held his head upouce more, 
and rejoiced in his own grandeur. After all, one horsewhip¬ 
ping cannot annihilate a man with a fine estate and eleven 
thousand a year, if he knows how to make a splash with his 
money. Olivia Marchmont shared in none of the festivals that 
were held. Her father was very ill this winter; and she spent 
a good deal of her time at Swampington Rectory, sitting in 
Hubert Arundel’s room, and reading to him. But her presence 
brought very little comfort to the sick man; for there was some¬ 
thing in his daughter’s manner that filled him with inexpress¬ 
ible terror; and he would lie for hours together watching- her 
blank face, and wondering at its horrible rigidity. What was 
it? What was that dreadful secret which had transformed this 
woman ? He tormented himself perpetually with this question, 
but he could imagine no answer to it. He did not know the 
power which a master-passion has upon these strong-minded 
women, whose minds are strong because of their narrowness, 
and who are the bonden slaves of one idea. He did not know 
that in a breast which holds no pure affection the master-fiend 
Passion rages like an all-devouring flame, perpetually consum¬ 
ing its victim. He did not know that in these violent and con- 
centrative natures the line that separates reason from madness 
is so feeble a demarkation that very few can perceive the hour 
in which it is passed. 

Olivia Marchmont had never been the most lively or delight¬ 
ful of companions. The tenderness which is the common attri¬ 
bute of a woman’s nature had not been given to her. She ought 
to have been a great man. Nature makes these mistakes now 
and then, and the victim expiates the error. Hence come such 
imperfect histories as that of English Elizabeth and Swedish 
Christina. The fetters that had bound Olivia’s narrow life had 
eaten into her very soul, and cankered there. If she could have 
been Edward Arundel’s wife, she would have been the noblest 
and truest wife that ever merged her identity into that of an¬ 
other, and lived upon the refracted glory of her husband’s tri¬ 
umphs. She would have been a Rachel Russell, a Mrs. Hutch¬ 
inson, a Lady Nithisdale, a Madame de Lavalette. She would 
have been great by reason of her power of self-abnegation; and 
there wmuld have been a strange charm in the aspect of this 
fierce nature attuned to harmonize with its master’s soul, all the 
barbaric discords melting into melody, all the harsh combina¬ 
tions softening into perfect music; just as in Mr. Buckstone’s 
most poetic drama we are bewitched by the wild huntress sit¬ 
ting at the feet of her lord, and admire her chiefly because we 
know that only that one man upon all the earth could have had 
power to tame her. To any one who had known Olivia’s secret 
there could have been no sadder spectacle than this of her de¬ 
cay. The mind and body decayed together, bound by a mys¬ 
terious sympathy. All womanly round ness disappeared from 
the spare figure, and Mrs. Marchmont’s black dresses hung 
about her in loose folds. Her long, dead, black hair was pushed 
away from her thin face, and twisted into a heavy knot at the 
back of her head. 


270 


JOHN MARCHMONT*S LEGACY. 


Every charm that she had ever possessed was gone. The 
oldest women generally retain some traits of their lost beauty, 
some faint reflection of the sun that has gone down to light up 
the soft twilight of age, and even glimmer through the gloom of 
death. But this woman’s face retained no token of the past. 
No empty hull, with shattered bulwarks crumbled by the fury 
of fierce seas, cast on a desert shore to rot and perish there, was 
ever more complete a wreck than she was. Upon her face and 
figure, in every token and gesture, in the tone of every word 
she spoke, there was an awful something, worse than the seal of 
death. Little by little the miserable truth dawned upon Hubert 
Arundel. His daughter was mad! He knew this, but he kept 
the dreadful knowledge hidden in his own breast; a hideous 
secret, whose weight oppressed him like an actual burden. He 
kept the secret; for it would have seemed to him the most cruel 
treason against his daughter to have confessed his discovery to 
any living creature, unless it should be absolutely necessary to 
do so. Meanwhile he set himself to watch Olivia, detaining her 
at the Rectory for a week together, in order that he might see 
her in all moods, under all phases. 

He found that there were no violent or outrageous evidences 
of this mental decay. The mind had given way under the per¬ 
petual pressure of one set of thoughts. Hubert Arundel, in his 
ignorance of his daughter’s secrets, could not discover the cause 
of her decadence; but that cause was very simple. If the body is a 
wonderful and complex machine which must not be tampered 
with—surely if this is so, that still more complex machine the 
mind must need careful treatment. If such and such a course 
of diet is fatal to the body’s health, may not some thoughts be 
equally fatal to the health of the brain ? may not a monotonous 
recurrence of the same ideas be above all injurious? If by reason 
of the peculiar nature of a man’s labor he uses one limb or one 
muscle more than the rest, strange bosses rise up to testify to 
that ill-usage, the idle limbs wither, and the harmonious 
perfection of Nature gives place to deformity. So the brain, per¬ 
petually pressed upon, forever strained to its utmost tension by 
the wearisome succession of thoughts, becomes crooked, and one¬ 
sided, always leaning one way, continually tripping up the 
wretched thinker. 

John Marchmont’s widow had only one set of ideas. On 
every subject but that one which involved Edward Arundel and 
his fortunes her memory had decayed. She asked her father 
the same questions—commonplace questions relating to his own 
comfort, or to simple household matters—twenty times a day, 
always forgetting that he had answered her. She had that im¬ 
patience as to the passage of time which is one of the most pain¬ 
ful signs of madness. She looked at her watch ten times an 
hour, and would wander out into the cheerless garden, indiffer¬ 
ent to the bitter weather, in order to look at the clock iq the 
church-steeple, under the impression that her own watch, and 
her father’s, and all the time-keepers in the house, were slow. 

She was sometimes restless, taking up one occupation after 
another, to throw all aside with equal, impatience, and some- 


JOHN MARCHMONT \S LEGACY. 


271 


times immobile for hours together. But as she was never vio¬ 
lent, never in any way unreasonable, Hubert Arundel had not 
the heart to call science to his aid, and to betray her secret. 
The thought that his daughter’s malady might be cured never 
entered his mind as within the range of possibility. There was 
nothing to cure; no delusions to be exercised by medical treat¬ 
ment: no violent vagaries to be held in check by drugs and 
nostrums. The powerful intellect had decayed; its force and 
clearness were gone. No drugs that ever grew upon this earth 
could restore that which was lost. 

This was the conviction which kept the rector silent. It 
would have given him unutterable anguish to have told his 
daughter’s secret to any living being; but he would have en¬ 
dured that misery if she could have been benefited thereby. 
He most firmly believed that she could not, and that her state 
was irremediable. 

“ My poor girl!” he thought to himself, “how proud I was 
of her ten years ago! I can do nothing for her; nothing except 
to love and cherish her, and hide her humiliation from the 
world.” 

But Hubert Arundel was not allowed to do even this much 
for the daughter he loved; for when Olivia had been with him 
a little more than a week, Paul Marchmont and his mother 
drove over to Swampington Rectory one morning and carried 
her away with them. The rector then saw for the first time 
that bis once strong-minded daughter was completely under the 
dominion of these two people, and that they knew the nature 
of her malady quite as well as he did. He resisted her return 
to the Towers; but his resistance was useless. She submitted 
herself willingly to her new friends, declaring that she was bet¬ 
ter in their house than anywhere else. So she went back to her 
old suit of apartments, and her old servant Barbara waited 
upon her; and she sat alone in dead John Marchmont’s study, 
listening to the January winds shrieking in the quadrangle, the 
distant rooks calling to each other among the bare branches of 
the poplars, the banging of the doors in the corridors, and occa¬ 
sional gusts of laughter from the open door of the dining-room,, 
while Paul Marchmont and his guests gave a jovial welcome to 
the new year. 

While the master of the Towers reasserted his grandeur, and 
made stupendous efforts to regain the ground he had lost, Ed¬ 
ward Arundel wandered far away in the depths of Brittany, 
traveling on foot, and making himself familiar with the simple 
peasants, who were ignorant of his troubles. He had sent Mr. 
Morrison down to Dangerfield with the greater part of his lug¬ 
gage; but he had not the heart to go back himself—yet awhile. 
He was afraid of his mother’s sympathy, and he went away into 
the lonely Breton villages to try and cure himself of his great 
grief before he began life again as a soldier. It was useless for 
him to strive against his vocation. Nature had made him a 
soldier, and nothing else; and wherever there was a good cause 
to be fought for, his place was on the battle-field. 



272 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY . 


CHAPTEE XXXII. 

MISS LAWFORD SPEAKS HER MIND. 

Major Lawford and his blue-eyed daughters were not 
among those who accepted Paul Marchmont’s princely hospital- 
ites. Belinda Lawford had never heard the story of Edward’s 
lost bride as he himself could have told it; but she had heard an 
imperfect version of the sorrowful history from Letitia, and 
that young lady had informed her friend of Edward’s animus 
against the new master of the Towers. 

“ The poor dear foolish boy will insist upon thinking that Mr. 
Marchmont was at the bottom of it all,” she had said in a con¬ 
fidential chat with Belinda, “ somehow or other; but whether 
he was, or whether he wasn’t, I’m sure I can’t say. But if one 
attempts to take Mr. Marchmont’s part with Edward, he does 
get so violent and go on so, that one’s obliged to say all sorts of 
dreadful things about Mary’s cousin for the sake of peace. But, 
really, when I saw him one day in Kemberling, with a black 
velvet shooting-coat, and his beautiful smooth white hair and 
mustache, I thought him most interesting. And so would you, 
Belinda, if you weren’t so wrapped up in that brother of mine.” 

Whereupon, of course, Miss Lawford had been compelled to 
declare that she was not “ wrapped up” in Edward, whatever 
state of feeling that obscure phrase might signify; and to-express, 
by the vehemence of her denial, that, if anything, she rather 
detested Miss Arundel’s brother. By the bye, did you ever 
know a young lady who could understand the admiration 
aroused in the breast of other young ladies for that most unin¬ 
teresting object, a brother ? Or a gentleman who could enter 
with any warmth of sympathy into his friend’s feelings respect¬ 
ing the auburn tresses or the Grecian nose of “ a sister ?” 
Belinda Lawford, 1 say, knew something of the story of Mary 
Arundel’s death, and she implored her father to reject all hospi¬ 
talities offered by Paul Marchmont. 

“ You won’t go to the Towers, papa, dear ?” she said, with her 
hands clasped upon her father’s arm, her cheeks kindling, and 
her eyes filling with tears as she spoke to him; “you won’t go 
and sit at Paul Marchmont’s table, and drink his wine, and 
shake hands with him ? I know that he had something to do 
with Mary Arundel’s death. He had, indeed, papa. I don’t 
mean anything that the world calls crime; I don’t mean any act 
of open violence. But he was cruel to her, papa; he was cruel 

to her. He tortured her and tormented her until she-” The 

girl paused for a moment, and her voice faltered a little. “ Oh, 
how I wish that I had known her, papa,” she cried, presently’ 
“ that I might have stood by her, and comforted her all through 
that sad time!” 

The major looked down at his daughter with a tender smile— 
a smile that was a little significant perhaps, but full of love and 
admiration. 

“ You would have stood by Arundel’s poor little wife, my 


JOHN MA RCHMONrS LEGACY. 218 

dear?” he said. “You would stand by her now, if she were 
alive, and needed your friendship?” 

“ I would, indeed, papa,” Miss Lawford answered, resolutely. 

“I believe it, my dear; I believe it with all my heart. You 
are a good girl, my Linda; you are a noble girl. You are as 
good as a son to me, my dear.” 

Major Lawford was silent for a few minutes, holding his 
daughter in his arms and pressing his lips upon her broad fore¬ 
head. 

“ You are fit to be a soldier’s daughter, my darling,” he said, 
“ or—or a soldier’s wife.” 

He kissed her once more, and then left her, sighing thought¬ 
fully as he went away. 

This is how it was that neither Major Lawford nor any of his 
family were present at those splendid entertainments which 
Paul Marckmont gave to his new friends. Mr. Marchmont 
knew almost as well as the Lawfords themselves why they did 
not come, and the absence of them at his glittering board made 
his bread bitter to him and his wine tasteless. He wanted these 
people as much as the others—more than the others perhaps; 
for they had been Edward Arundel’s friends, and he wanted 
them to turn their backs upon the young man and join in the 
general outcry against his violence and brutality. The absence 
of Major Lawford at tbe lighted banquet-table tormented this 
modern rich man as the presence of Mordecai at the gate tor¬ 
mented Hainan. It was not enough that all the others should 
come if these stayed away, and by their absence tacitly testified 
to their contempt for the master of the Towers. 

He met Belinda sometimes on horseback with the old gray- 
headed groom behind her, a fearless young Amazon, breasting 
the January winds, with her blue eyes sparkling, and her auburn 
hair blowing away from her candid face; he met her, and looked 
out at her from the luxurious barouche in which it was his 
pleasure to loll by his mother’s side, half buried among soft 
furry rugs and sleek leopard-skins, making the chilly atmosphere 
through which he rode odorous with the scent of perfumed hair, 
and smiling over cruelly delicious criticisms in newly-cut re¬ 
views. He looked out at this fearless girl, whose friends so 
obstinately stood by Edward Arundel, and the cold contempt 
upon Miss Lawford’s face cut him more keenly than the sharp¬ 
est wind of that bitter January. 

Then he took counsel with his womankind, not telling them 
his thoughts, fears, doubts, or wishes—it was not his habit to 
do that—but taking their ideas, and only telling them so much 
as it was necessary for them to know in order that they might 
be useful to him. Paul Marchmont’s life was regulated by a 
few rules, so simple, that a child might have learned them; in¬ 
deed I regret to say that some children are very apt pupils in 
that school of philosophy to which the master of Marchmont 
Towers belonged, and cause astonishment to their elders by the 
precocity of their intelligence. Mr. Marchmont might have in¬ 
scribed upon a very small scrap of parchment the moral maxims 
by which he regulated his dealings with mankind. 


274 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY, 


“ Always conciliate,” said this philosopher. “Never tell an 
unnecessary lie. Be agreeable and generous to those who serve 
you. N» B. No good carpenter would allow his tools to get 
rusty. Make yourself master of the opinions of others, but hold 
your own tongue. Seek to obtain the maximum of enjoyment 
with the minimum of risk.” 

Such golden saws as these did Mr. Marchmont make for his 
own especial guidance; and he hoped to pass smoothly onward 
upon the railway of life, riding in a first-class carriage, on the 
greased wheels of a very easy conscience. As for any unfort¬ 
unate fellow-travelers pitched out of the carriage-window in the 
course of the journey, or left lonely and helpless at desolate 
stations on the way, Providence, and not Mr. Marchmont, was 
responsible for their welfare. Paul had a high appreciation of 
Providence, and was fond of talking—very piously as some 
people said, very impiously, as others secretly thought—about 
the inestimable Wisdom which governed all the affairs of this 
lower world. Nowhere, according to the artist, had the hand 
of Providence been more clearly visible than in this matter 
about Paul’s poor little cousin Mary. If Providence had in¬ 
tended John Marcbmont’s daughter to be a happy bride, a happy 
wife, the prosperous mistress of that stately habitation, why ail 
that sad business of old Mr. Arundel’s sudden illness, Edward’s 
hurried journey, the railway accident, and all the complications 
that had thereupon arisen ? Nothing would have been easier 
than for Providence to have prevented all this; and then he, 
Paul, would have been still in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, 
patiently waiting for a friendly lift upon the high-road of life. 
Nobody could say that he had ever been otherwise than patient. 
Nobody could say that he had ever intruded himself upon his 
rich cousins at the Towers, or had been heard to speculate upon 
his possible inheritance of the estate; or that he had, in short, 
done anything but that which the best, truest, most consci¬ 
entious and disinterested of mankind should do. 

In the course of that bleak, frosty January, Mr. Marchmont 
sent his mother and his sister Lavinia to make a call at the 
Grange. The Grange people had never called upon Mrs. March¬ 
mont; but Paul did not allow any flimsy ceremonial law to 
stand in his way when he had a purpose to achieve. So the 
ladies went to the Grange and were politely received; for Miss 
Lawford and her mother were a great deal too innocent and 
noble-minded to imagine that these palefaced, delicate-looking 
women could have had any part, either directly or indirectly, in 
that cruel treatment which had driven Edward’s young wife from 
her home. Mrs. Marchmont and Mrs. Weston were kindly re¬ 
ceived, therefore, and in a little conversation with Belinda about 
birds, and dahlias, and worsted-work, and the most innocent 
subjects imaginable, the wily Lavinia contrived to lead up to 
Miss Letitia Arundel, and thence, by the easiest conversational 
short cut, to Edward and his lost wife. Mrs. Weston was 
obliged to bring her cambric handkerchief out of her muff when 
she talked about her cousin Mary; but she was a clever woman, 
and she had taken to heart Paul’s pet maxim about the folly of 


JOHN MARCHMONT 'S LEGACY. 


275 


unnecessary lies; and she was so candid as to entirely disarm 
Miss Lawford, who had a school-girlish notion that every kind 
of hypocrisy and falsehood was outwardly visible in a servile 
and slavish manner. She was not upon her guard against those 
practiced adepts in the art of deception, who have learned to 
make that subtle admixture of truth and falsehood which defies 
detection, like some fabrics in whose woof silk and cotton are so 
cunningly blended that only a practiced eye can discover the in¬ 
ferior material. 

So Laviuia dried her eyes and put her handkerchief back 
in her muff, and said, betwixt laughing and crying: 

“ Now you know, my dear Miss Lawford, you mustn’t think 
that I would for a moment pretend to be sorry that my brother 
has come into this fortune. Of course any such pretense as that 
would be ridiculous, and quite useless into the bargain, and it 
isn’t likely anybody would believe me. Paul, is a dear, kind 
creature, the best of brothers, the most affectionate of sons, and 
deserves any good fortune that could fall to his lot; but I am 
truly sorry for that poor little girl. I am truly sorry, believe 
me, Miss Lawford. and I only regret that Mr. Weston and I did 
not come to Kemberling sooner, so that I might have been a 
friend to the poor little thing; for then, you know, I might have 
prevented that foolish runaway match, out of which almost all 
the poor child’s troubles arose. Yes, Miss Lawford; I wish I had 
been able to befriend that unhappy child, although by my so 
doing Paul would have been kept out of the fortune he now en¬ 
joys—for some time, at any rate. I say for some time, because 
I do not believe that Mary Marchmont would have lived to be 
old under the happiest circumstances. Her mother died very 
young; and her father, and her father’s father, were consump- 

Then Mrs. Weston took occasion, incidentally of course, to al¬ 
lude to her brothers goodness; but even then she was on her 
guard, and took care not to say too much. 

“ The worst actors are those who overact their parts.” There 
was another of Paul Marchmont’s golden maxims. 

“ I don’t know what my brother may be to the rest of the 
world,” Lavinia said, “but I know how good he is to those who 
belong to him. I should be ashamed to tell you all he has done 
for Mr. Westou and me. He gave me this cashmere shawl at 
the beginning of the winter, and a set of sables fit for a duchess; 
though I told him they were not at all the thing for a village 
surgeon’s wife, who keeps only one servaut and dusts her own 

best parlor.” , „ . 

And Mrs. Marchmont talked of her son, with no loud enthu¬ 
siasm, but with a tone of quiet conviction that was worth 
any money to Paul. To have an innocent person, some one 
not in the secret, to play a small part in the comedy of 
his life was a desideratum with the artist. His mother had 
always been this person, this unconscious actor, instinctively 
falling into the action of the play, and shedding real tears, and 
smiling actual smiles—the most useful assistants to a great 
schemer f 


276 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


But during the whole of the visit nothing was said as to Paul’s 
conduct toward his unhappy cousin; nothing was said either 
to praise or to exculpate; and when Mrs. Marchmont and her 
daughter drove away in one of the new equipages which Paul 
had selected for his mother, they left only a vague impression 
in Belinda’s breast. She didn’t quite know what to think. 
These people were so frank and candid, they had spoken of Paul 
with such real affection, that it was almost impossible to doubt 
them. Paul Marchmont might be a bad man, but his mother 
and sister loved him, and surely they were ignorant of his wick¬ 
edness. 

Mrs. Lawford troubled herself veiy little about this unex¬ 
pected morning call. She was an excellent, warm-hearted, do¬ 
mestic creature, and thought a great deal more about the grand 
question as to whether she should have new* damask curtains for 
the drawing-room, or send the old ones to be dyed; or whether 
she should withdraw her custom from the Kimberling grocer, 
whose “ best black ” at four-and-sixpence was really now so 
very inferior; or whether Belinda’s summer silk-dress could be 
cut down into a frock for Isabella to wear in the winter even¬ 
ings—than about the rights or wrongs of that story of 
the horsewhipping which had been administered to Mr. March¬ 
mont. 

“ I’m sure those Marchmont Towers people seem very nice, 
my dear,” the lady said to Belinda, “ and I really wish your 
papa would go and dine there. You know I like him to dine 
out a good deal in the winter, Linda; not that I want to save 
the housekeeping money, only it is so difficult to vary the din¬ 
ners for a man who has been in the army, and has had mess- 
dinners and a French cook.” 

But Belinda stuck fast to her colors. She was a soldier’s 
daughter, as her father said, and she was almost as good as a 
son. The major meant this latter remark for very high praise; 
for the great grief of his life had been the want of a boy’s brave 
face at his fireside. She was as good as a son; that is to say, 
she was braver and more outspoken than most women, although 
she was feminine and gentle withal, and by no means strong- 
minded. She would have fainted, perhaps, at the first sight of 
blood upon a battle-field; but she would have bled to death with 
the calm heroism of a martyr rather than have been false to a 
noble cause. 

“ I think papa is quite right not to go to Marchmont Towers, 
mamma,” she said; the artful minx omitted to state that it was 
by reason of her entreaties her father had stayed away. 

“ I think he is quite right. Mrs. Marchmont and Mrs. Weston 
may be very nice, and of course it isn’t likely they would be 
cruel to poor young Mrs. Arundel; but I know that Mr, March¬ 
mont must have been unkind to that poor girl, or Mr. Arundel 
would never have done what he did.” 

It is in the nature of good and brave men to lay down their 
masculine rights when they leave their hats in the hall, and to 
submit themselves meekly to feminine government. It is only 
the whippersnapper, the sneak, the coward out of doors, who i§ 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


27? 


a tyrant at home. See how meekly the Conqueror of Italy went 
home to his charming Creole wife! See how pleasantly the Lib¬ 
erator of Italy lolls in the carriage of his golden-haired empress, 
when the young trees in that fair wood beyond the triumphal 
avch are green in the bright spring weather, and all the hired 
vehicles in Paris are making toward the cascade! Major Law- 
ford’s wife was too gentle, and too busy with her store-room and 
her domestic cares, to tyrannize over her lord and master; but 
the major was duly hen-pecked by his blue-eyed daughters, and 
went here and there as they dictated. 

So he stayed away from Marchmont Towers to please Belinda, 
and only said. “ Haw,” “ Yes,” “ Ton my honor, now!” “ Bless 
my soul!” when his friends told him of the magnificence of 
Paul’s dinners. 

But although the major and his eldest daughter did not en¬ 
counter Mr. Marchmont in his own house, they met him some¬ 
times on the neutral ground of other people’s dining-rooms, and 
upon one especial evening at a pleasant little dinner-party given 
by the rector of the parish in which the Grange was situated. 

Paul made himself particularly agreeable upon this occasion; 
but in the brief interval before dinner he was absorbed in a con¬ 
versation with Mr. Davenant, the rector, upon the subject of 
ecclesiastical architecture—he knew everything, and could ta k 
about everything, this dear Paul—and made no attempt to ap¬ 
proach Miss Lawford. He only looked at her now and then, 
with a furtive, oblique glance out of his almond-shaped, pale- 
gray eyes; a glance that was wisely hidden by the light auburn 
lashes, for it had an unpleasant resemblance to the leer of an 
evil-natured sprite. Mr. Marchmont contented himself with 
keeping this furtive watch upon Belinda, while she talked gavlv 
with the rector’s two daughters in a pleasant corner near the 
piano; and as the artist took Mrs. Davenant down to the dining¬ 
room, and sat next her at dinner, he had no opportunity of 
fraternizing with Belinda during that meal; for the young lady 
was divided from him by the w’hole length of the table, and 
moreover, very much occupied by the exclusive attentions of 
two callow-looking officers from the nearest garrison town, who 
were afflicted with extreme youth, and were painfully conscious 
of their degraded state, but tried notwithstanding to carry it off 
with a high hand, and affected the opinions of used-up fifty. 

Mr. Marchmont had none of his womankind with him at this 
dinner; for his mother and invalid sister had neither of them 
felt strong enough to come, and Mr. and Mrs. Weston had not 
been invited. The artist’s special object in coming to this din¬ 
ner was the conquest of Miss Belinda Lawford. She sided with 
Edward Arundel against him. She must be made to believe Ed¬ 
ward wrong, and himself right; or she might go about spreading 
her opinions, and doing him mischief. Beyond that he had an¬ 
other idea about this auburn-haired, blue-eyed Belinda; and he 
looked to this dinner as likely to afford him an opportunity of 
laying the foundation of a very diplomatic scheme, in which 
Miss Lawford should unconsciously become his tool. He was 
vexed at being placed apart from her at the dinner-table, but he 


278 JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 

concealed his vexation; and he was aggravated by the rector s 
old-fashioned hospitality, which detained the gentlemen over 
their wine for some time after the ladies left the dining-room. 
But tlie opportunity that he wanted came nevertheless, and in a 
manner that he had not anticipated. 

The two callow defenders of their country had sneaked out of 
the dining-room, and rejoined the ladies in the cozy countrified 
drawing-rooms. They had stolen away, these two young men; 
for they were oppressed by the weight of a fearful secret. They 
couldn't drink claret! No; they had tried to like it; they had 
smacked their lips and winked their eyes—both at once, for even 
winking with one eye is an accomplishment scarcely compatible 
with extreme youth—over vintages that had seemed to them 
like a happy admixture of red ink and green-gooseberry juice. 

They had perjured their boyish souls with hideous falsehoods 
as to their appreciation of pale tawny port, light dry wines, ’42 
ports, ’45 ports; when in the secret recesses of their minds they 
affected sweet and “ slab” compounds sold by publicans, and 
facetiously called “our prime old port, at four and sixpence,” 
They were very young, these beardless soldiers. They liked 
strawberry ices, and were on the verge of insolvency from a 
predilection for clammy bath-buns, jam-tarts, and cherry- 
brandy. They liked gorgeous waistcoats; and patent-leather 
boots in a state of virgin brilliancy; and little bouquets in their 
buttonholes; and a deluge of millefleurs upon their flimsy hand¬ 
kerchiefs. They were very young; the men they met at dinner¬ 
parties to-day had tipped them at Eton or Woolwich only yes¬ 
terday, as it seemed, and they remembered it and despised 
them. It was only a few months since they had been snubbed 
for calling the Douro a mountain in Switzerland, and the Him¬ 
alayas a cluster of islands in the Pacific, at horrible viva voce 
examinations, in which the cold perspiration had bedewed their 
pallid young cheeks. They were delighted to get away from 
those elderly creatures in the rector’s dining-room to the snug 
little back drawing-room, where Belinda Lawford and the two 
Miss Davenants were murmuring softly iu the firelight, like 
young turtles in a sheltered dove-cote; while the matrons in the 
larger apartment sipped their coffee, and conversed in low, awful 
voices about the iniquities of housemaids and the insubordina¬ 
tion of gardeners and grooms. 

Belinda and her two companions were very polite to the help¬ 
less young wanderers from the dining-room; and they talked 
pleasantly enough of all manner of things, until somehow or 
other the conversation came round to the Marchmont Towers 
scandal, and Edward’s treatment of his lost wife’s kinsman. 

One of the young men had been present at the hunting-break¬ 
fast on that bright October morning, and he was not a little 
proud of his superior acquaintance with the whole business. 

“ I was the-aw, Miss Lawford,” he said. “ I was on the tew- 
wace after bweakfast—and a vewy excellent bweakfast it was, 
I ass-haw you; the still Moselle was weally admiwable, and 
Marchmont has some Madewa that immeasurably surpasses any¬ 
thing I can induce my wine-merchant to send me—I was on the 


JOHN MAHCIIMONT'S LEGACY. 


279 

tew-wace, and I saw Awundel cornin’ up the steps, awful pale, 
and gwaspin’ his whip; and I was a witness to all the west that 
occurred; and if I’d been Marchmont I should have shot 
Awundel before he left the pawk, if I’d had to swing for it, 
Miss Lawford; for I should have felt, b’Jove, that my own sense 
of bonaw demanded the sacwifice. Howevaw, Marchmont 
seems a vewy good fella; so I suppose it’s all wight as far as he 
goes; but it was a bwutal business altogethaw, and that fella 
Awundel must be a scohndwel.” 

Belinda could not bear this. She had borne a great deal al~ 
read}'. She had been obliged to sit by very often, and hear 
Edward Arundel’s conduct discussed by Thomas, Richard, and 
Henry, or anybody else who chose to talk about it; and she had 
been patient, and had held her peace, with her heart bumping 
indignantly in her breast, and passionate crimson blushes burn¬ 
ing her cheeks. But she could not submit to hear a beardless, 
pale-faced, and rather weak-eyed young ensign—who had never 
done any greater service for his queen and country than to cry 
“ Shudd ruph!” to a detachment of raw recruits in a barrack- 
yard, in the early bleakness of a winter’s morning—take upon 
himself to blame Edward Arundel, the brave soldier, the noble 
Indian hero, the devoted lover and husband, the valiant avenger 
of his dead wife’s wrongs. 

‘‘I don’t think you know anything of the real story, Mr. 
Piilisser,” Belinda said, boldly, to the half-fledged ensign. “If 
you did, I’m sure you would admire Mr. Arundel’s conduct in¬ 
stead of blaming it. Mr. Marchmont fully deserved the disgrace 
which Edward—which Mr. Arundel inflicted upon him.” 

The words were still upon her lips when Paul Marchmont 
himself came softly through the flickering fire-light to the low 
chair upon which Belinda sat. He came behind her, and, laying 
his hand lightly upon the scroll-work at the back of her chair, 
bent over her, and said, in a low, confidential voice: 

“You are a noble girl, Miss Lawford; I am sorry that you 
should think ill of me; but I like you for having spoken so 
frankly. You are a most noble girl. You are worthy to be your 
father’s daughter.” 

This was said with a tone of suppressed emotion; but it was 
quite a random shot. Paul didn’t know anything about the 
major, except that he had a comfortable income, drove a neat 
dog-cart, and was often seen riding on the flat Lincolnshire 
roads with his eldest daughter. For all Paul knew to the con¬ 
trary, Major Lawford might have been the veriest bully and 
coward who ever made those about him miserable; but Mr. 
Marchmont’s tone as good as expressed that he was intimately 
acquainted with the old soldier's career, and had long admired 
and loved him. It was one of Paul’s happy inspirations, this 
allusion to Belinda’s father; one of those bright touches of color 
laid on with a skillful recklessness, and giving sudden bright¬ 
ness to the whole picture; a little spot of vermilion dabbed upon 
the canvas with the point of the pallet-knife, and lightning up 
all the landscape with sunshine. 

“ You know my father?” said Belinda, surprised. 


m JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 

“ Who does not know him ?” cried the artisfc. “ Do you think, 
Miss Lawford, that it is necessary to sit at a man’s dinner-table 
before you know what he is? I know your father to be a 
good man and a brave soldier, as well as I know that the Duke 
of Wellington is a great general, though I never dined at Apslev 
House. I respect your father, Miss Lawford, and I have been 
very much distressed by his evident avoidance of me and mine.” 

This was coming to the point at once. Mr. Marchmont’s 
manner was candor itself. Belinda looked at him with widely- 
opened, wondering eyes. She was looking for the evidence of 
his wickedness in his face. I think she half expected that Mr. 
Marclimont would have corked eyebrows, and a slouched hat 
like a stage ruffian. She was so innocent, this simple young 
Belinda, that she imagined wicked people must necessarily look 
wicked. 

Paul Marchmont saw the wavering of her mind in that half- 
puzzled expression, and he went on boldly. 

“ I like your father, Miss Lawford,” he said; “ I like him, and 
respect him; and I want to know him. Other people may mis¬ 
understand me, if they please. T can't help their opinions. The 
truth is generally strongest in.the end; and I can afford to wait. 
But I cannot afford to forfeit the friendship of a man I esteem: 
I cannot afford to be misunderstood by your father, Miss Law¬ 
ford; and I have been very much pained—yes, very much pained 
—by the manner in which the major has repelled my little at¬ 
tempts at friendliness.” 

Belinda’s heart smote her. She knew that it was her influ¬ 
ence that had kept her father away from Marchmont Towers. 
This young lady was very conscientious. She was a Christian, 
too; and a certain sentence touching wrongful judgment rose 
up against her while Mr. Marchmont was speaking. If she had 
wronged this man; if Edward Arundel had been misled by his 
passionate grief for Mary; if she had been deluded by Edward’s 
error—how very badly Mr. Marchmont had been treated be¬ 
tween them! She didn’t say anything, but sat looking thought¬ 
fully at the fire, and Paul saw that she was more and more per¬ 
plexed. This was just what the artist wanted. To talk his 
antagonist into a state of intellectual fog was almost always his 
manner of commencing an argument. 

Belinda was silent, and Paul seated himself in a chair close to 
hers. The callow ensigns had gone into the lamp-lit front 
drawing-room, and were busy turning over the leaves—and 
never turning them over at the right moment—of a thundering 
duet which the Misses Davenant were performing for the edifi¬ 
cation of their papa's visitors. Miss^Lawford and Mr. March¬ 
mont were alone, therefore, in that cozy inner chamber, and a 
very pretty picture they made: the auburn haired girl, and the 
pale, sentimental-looking artist sitting side by side in the glow 
of the low fire, with a background of crimson curtains and 
gleaming picture-frames; winter flowers piled in grim Indian 
jars; the fitful light flickering now and then upon one sharp 
angle of the high carved mantel-piece, with all its litter of an¬ 
tique china; and the rest of the room in somber shadow, Paul 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 281 

had the field all to himself, and felt that victory would be easy. 
He began to talk about Edward Arundel. 

If he had said one word against the young soldier, I think 
this impetuous girl, who had not yet learned to count the cost 
of what she did, would have been passionately eloquent in de¬ 
fense of her friend’s brother—for no other reason than that he 
was the brother of her friend, of course; what other reason 
should she have for defending Mr. Arundel ? 

But Paul Marchmont did not give her any occasion for indig¬ 
nation. On the contrary, be spoke in praise of the hot-headed 
young soldier who had assaulted him, making all manner of ex¬ 
cuses for the young man’s violence, and using that tone of calm 
superiorly with which a man of the world might naturally talk 
about a foolish boy. 

“ He has been very unreasonable, Miss Lawford,” Paul said, 
by and by; “ He has been very unreasonable, and has most 
grossly insulted me. But, in spite of all, I believe him to be a 
verv noble young fellow, and I cannot find it in my heart to be 
really angry with him. What his particular grievance against 
me may be I really do not know.” 

The furtive glance from the long, narrow gray eyes kept close 
watch upon Belinda’s face as Paul said this. Mr. Marchmont 
wanted to ascertain exactly how much Belinda knew of that 
grievance of Edward’s; but lie could see perplexity only in her 
face. She knew nothing definite, therefore; she had only heard 
Edward talk vaguely of his wrongs. Paul Marchmont was con¬ 
vinced of this, and he went on boldly now, for he felt that the 
ground wa*sall clear before him. 

“ This foolish young soldier chooses to be angry with me be¬ 
cause of a calamity which I was as powerless to avert as to pre¬ 
vent that accident upon the Southwestern Railway by which 
Mr. Arundel so nearly lost his life. I cannot tell you how sin¬ 
cerely I regret the misconception that has arisen in his mind. 
Because I have profited by the death of John Marchmont’s 
daughter, this impetuous young husband imagines—what ? I 
cannot answer nat question; nor can he himself,it seems, since 
he has made no definite statement of his wrongs to any living 
being.” 

The artist looked more sharply than ever at Belinda’s listen¬ 
ing face. There was no change in its expression. The same 
wondering look, the same perplexity—that was all. 

“ When I say that I regret the young man’s folly, Miss Law- 
ford,” Paul continued, “believe me it is chiefly on his account 
rather than my own. Any insult which he can inflict upon me 
can only rebound upon himself, since everybody in Lincolnshire 
knows that I am in the right, and he is in the wrong.” 

Mr. Marchmont was going on very smoothly; but at this 
point Miss Lawford, who had by no means deserted her colors, 
interrupted his easy progress. 

“ It remains to be proved who is right, and who wrong, Mr. 
Marchmont,” she said. “Mr. Arundel is the brother of my 
friend. I cannot easily believe him to have done wrong.” 

.Paul looked at her with a smile—a smile tfiat brought hot 


282 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


blushes to her face; but she returned his look without flinching. 
The brave blue eyes looked full at the narrow gray eyes shel¬ 
tered under pale auburn lashes, and their steadfast gaze did not 
waver. 

“ Ah, Miss Lawford,” said the artist, still smiling, “ when a 
young man is handsome, brave, chivalrous, and generous- 
hearted, it is very difficult to convince a woman that he can 
do wrong. Edward Arundel has done wrong. His ultra-Quix- 
otism has made him blind to the folly of his own acts. I can 
afford to forgive him. But I repeat that I regret his infatuation 
about this poor lost girl far more upon his account than on my 
own; for I know—at least, I venture to think—that a way lies 
open to him of a happier and a better life than he could ever 
have known with my poor childish cousin Mary Marchmont. I 
have reason to know that he has formed another attachment, 
and that it is only a chivalrous delusion about that poor girl— 
whom he was never really in love with, and whom he only 
married because of some romantic notion inspired by my 
Cousin John—that withholds him from that other and brighter 
prospect.” 

He was silent for a,few moments, and then he said, hastily: 

“ Pardon me, Miss Lawford; I have been betrayed into saying 
much that I had better have left unsaid, more especially to you. 
I-•” 

He hesitated a little as if embarrassed, and then rose and 
looked into the next room, where the duet had been followed by 
a solo. 

One of the rector’s daughters came toward the inner drawing¬ 
room, followed by a callow ensign. 

“ We want Belinda to sing,” exclaimed Miss Davenant. “ We 
want you to sing, you tiresome Belinda, instead of hiding your¬ 
self in that dark room all the evening.” 

Belinda came out of the darkness with her cheeks flushed and 
her eyelids drooping. Her heart was beating so fast as to make 
it quite impossible to speak just yet, or to sing either. But she 
sat down before the piano, and, with hands that trembled in 
spite of herself, began to play one of her pet sonatas. 

Unhappily Beethoven requires precision of touch in the 
pianist who is bold enough to seek to interpret him; and upon 
this occasion I am compelled to admit that Miss Lawford’s 
fingering was eccentric, not to say ridiculous—in common par¬ 
lance, she made a mess of it; and just as she was going to break 
down, friendly Clara Davenant cried out: 

“ That won’t do, Belinda! We want you to sing, not to play. 
You are trying to cheat us. We would rather have one of 
Moore’s melodies than all Beethoven’s sonatas.” 

So Miss Lawford, still blushing, with her eyelids still droop¬ 
ing, played Sir John Stevenson’s simple symphony, and, in a 
fresh swelling voice that filled the room with melody, began: 

“ Oh, the days are gone when beauty bright 
My heart’s chain wove; 

When my dream of life, from morn till night, 

Was love, still love!” 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


288 


And Paul Marchmont, sitting at the other end of 'tlie room 
turning over Miss Davenant’s scrap-book, looked up through 
his auburn lashes, and smiled at the beaming face of the singer. 

He felt that he had improved the occasion. 

“lam not afraid of Miss Lawford now,” he thought to him¬ 
self. 

This candid, fervent girl was only another piece in the 
schemer’s game of chess, and he saw a way of making her 
useful in the attainment of that great end which, in the 
strange simplicity of cunning, he believed to be the one purpose 
of every man’s life—Self-Aggrandizement. 

It never for a moment entered into his mind that Edward 
Arundel was any more real than he was himself. There can be 
no perfect comprehension where there is no sympathy. Paul 
believed that Edward had tried to become master of Mary 
Marchmont’s heritage, and had failed, and was angry because 
of his failure. He believed this passionate young man to be a 
schemer like himself, only a little more impetuous and blunder¬ 
ing in his manner of going to work. 

CHAPTER XXXill. 

RETURN OF THE WANDERER. 

The March winds were blowing among the oaks of Danger- 
Held Park, when Edward Arundel went back to the house which 
had never been his home since his boyhood. He went back be¬ 
cause he had grown weary of lonely wanderings in that strange 
Breton country. He had grown weary of himself, and of his 
own thought. He was worn out by the eager desire that de¬ 
voured him by day and by night—the passionate yearning to be 
far away beyond that low Eastern horizon line; away amidst 
the carnage and riot of an Indian battlefield. 

So he went back at last to his mother, who had written to him 
again and again, imploring him to return to her, and to rest, 
and to be happy in the familiar household where he was be¬ 
loved. He left his luggage at the little inn where the coach 
that had brought him from Exeter stopped, and then he walked 
quietly homeward in the gloaming. The early spring evening 
was bleak and chill. The blacksmith’s fire roared at him, as he 
went by the smithy. All the lights in the queer latticed 
windows twinkled and winked at him, as if in friendly welcome 
to the wanderer. He remerhbered them all; the quaint, mis¬ 
shapen, lop-sided roofs; the tumbledown chimneys; the low 
door-ways, that had sunk down below the level of the village 
street, until all the front parlors became cellars, and strange 
pedestrians butted their heads against the flower-pots in the bed¬ 
room windows; the withered iron frame and pitiful oil-lamp 
hung out at the corners of the street, and making a faint spot of 
feeble light upon the rugged pavement; mysterious little shops 
in diamond-paned parlor windows, where Dutch dolls and 
stationery, stale gingerbread and pickled-cabbage, were mixed 
up with wooden peg-tops, rickety paper-kites, green apples, anil 
string- -they were all familiar to him. 


284 


JOHN MARCH MONT’S LEGACY . 


It had been a fine thing once to come into this village with 
Letitia, and buy stale gingerbread and rickety kites of a snuffy 
old pensioner of his mother’s. The kites bad always stuck in 
the upper branches of the oaks, and the gingerbread had invari¬ 
ably choked him; but with the memory of the kites and ginger¬ 
bread came back all the freshness of his youth, and he looked 
with a pensive tenderness at the homely little shops, the mer¬ 
chandise flickering in the red fire-light, that filled each quaint 
interior with a genial glow of warmth and color. 

He passed unquestioned by a wicket at the side of the great 
gates. The fire-light was rosy in the windows of the lodge, and 
he heard a woman’s voice singing a monotonous song to a sleepy 
child. Every where in this pleasant England there seemed to be 
the glow of cottage-fires, and friendliness, and love and home. 
The young man sighed as he remembered that great stone man 
sion far away in dismal Lincolnshire, and thought how happy 
he might have been in this bleak spring twilight, if he could 
have sat by Mary Marchmont’s side in the western drawing¬ 
room, watching the fire-light and the shadows trembling on her 
fair young face. 

It never had been, and it never was to be. The happiness of 
a home; the sweet sense of ownership; the delight of dispensing 
pleasure to others; all the simple domestic joys which make life 
beautiful—had never been known to John Marchmont’s daugh¬ 
ter since that early time in which she shared her father’s lodg¬ 
ing in Oakley Street, and went out in the cold December morn¬ 
ing to buy rolls for Edward Arundel’s breakfast. From the 
bay-window of his mother’s favorite sitting-room the same red 
light that he had seen in every lattice in the village streamed 
out upon the growing darkness of the lawn. There was a half¬ 
glass door leading into a little lobby near this sitting-room. 
Edward Arundel opened it and went in, very quietly. He 
expected to find his mother and his sister in the room with the 
bay-window. 

The door of this familiar apartment was ajar; he pushed it 
open and went in. It was a very pretty room, and all the 
womanly litter of open books and music, needlework and 
drawing materials, made it homelike. The fire-light flickered 
upon everything—on the pictures and picture-frames, the black 
oak paneling, the open piano, a cluster of snow-drops in a tall 
glass on the table, the scattered worsteds by the embroidery- 
frame, the sleepy dogs upon the hearth-rug. A young lady 
stood in the bay-window with her back to the fire. Edward 
Arundel crept sottly up to her, and put his arm round her waist. 

“ Letty.” 

It was not Letitia, but a young lady with very blue eyes, who 
blushed scarlet, and turned upon the "young man rather fiercely; 
and then recognizing him, dropped into the nearest chair and 
began to tremble and grow pale. 

“ I am sorry I start led you. Miss Law ford,” Edward said, 
gently; “I really thought you were my sister. I did not even 
know that you were here.” 

• ‘ J^Oj of course not. I—you didn’t startle me much, Mr. 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


m 

Arundel, only you were not expected home. I thought you 
were far away in Brittany. I had no idea that there was any 
chance of your returning. I thought you meant to be away all 
the summer; Mrs. Arundel told me so.” 

Belinda Lawford said all this in that fresh girlish voice which 
was familiar to Mr. Arundel; but she was still very pale, and 
she still trembled a little, and there was something almost 
apologetic in the way in which she assured Edward that she had 
believed he would be abroad throughout the summer. It 
seemed almost as if she had said: I did not come here because 
I thought I should see you. I had no thought or hope of meet¬ 
ing you.” 

But Edward Arundel was not a coxcomb, and he was very 
slow to understand any such signs as these. He saw that he 
had startled the young lady, and that she had turned pale and 
trembled as she recognized him; and he looked at her with a 
balf-wondering, half-pensive expression in his face. 

She blushed as he looked at her. She went to the table and 
began to gather together the silks and worsteds, as if the ar¬ 
rangement of her work-basket were a matter of vital impor¬ 
tance, to be achieved at any sacrifice of politeness. Then sud¬ 
denly remembering that she ought to say something to Mr. 
Arundel, she gave evidence of the originality of her intellect by 
the following remark: 

“ How surprised Mrs. Arundel and Letitia will be to see you!” 

Even as she said this her eyes were still bent upon the skeins 
of worsted in her hand. 

“ Yes; I think they will be surprised. I did not mean to 
come home until the autumn. But I got so tired of wandering 
about a strange country alone. Where are they—my mother 
and Letitia?” 

“ They have gone down the village to the school. They will 
be back to tea. Your brother is away; and we dine at three 
o’clock, and drink tea at eight. It is so much pleasanter than 
dining late.” 

This was quite an effort of genius; and Miss Lawford went on 
sorting the skeins of worsted in the fire-light. Edward Arundel 
had been standing all this time with his hat in his hand, almost 
as if he had been a visitor making a late morning call upon 
Belinda; but be put his hat down now, and seated himself near 
the table by which the young lady stood busy with the arrange¬ 
ment of her work-basket. 

Her heart was beating very fast, and she was straining her 
arithmetical powers to the uttermost, in the endeavor to make 
a very abstruse calculation as to the time in which Mrs. Arun¬ 
del and Letitia could walk to the village school-house and back 
to Dangerfield, and the delay that might arise by reason of 
sundry interruptions from obsequious gaffers and respectful 
goodys, eager for a word of friendly salutation from their pa¬ 
troness. 

The arrangement of the work-basket could not last forever. 
It had become the most pitiful pretense by the time Miss Law¬ 
ford shut down the wicker lid and seated herself primly in a 


JOHN MARCHMONVS LEGACY, 


low chair by the fireplace. She sat looking down at the fire and 
twisting the slender gold chain in and out between her smooth 
white fingers. She looked very pretty in that fitful fire light, 
with her waving brown hair pushed off her forehead and her 
white eyelids hiding the tender blue eyes. She sat twisting the 
chain in her fingers, and dared not lift her eyes to Mr. Arundel’s 
face; and if there had been a whole flock of geese in the room 
she could not have said “ Bo!” to one of them. 

And yet she was not a stupid girl. Her father could have in¬ 
dignantly refuted any such slander as that against the azure¬ 
eyed Hebe, who made his home pleasant to him. To the 
major’s mind Belinda was all that man could desire in the 
woman of his choice, whether as daughter or wife. She was 
the bright genius of the old man’s home, and he loved her with 
that chivalrous devotion which is common to brave soldiers, 
who are the simplest and gentlest of men when you chain them 
to their firesides, and keep them away from the din of the 
camp and the confusion of the transport-ship. 

Belinda Lawford was clever, but only just clever enough to be 
charming. I don’t think she could have got through “ Paradise 
Lost.” or Gibbon’s “ Decline and Fall,” or a volume by Adam 
Smith or M’Culloch, though you had promised her a diamond 
necklace when she came conscientiously to “ Finis.” But she 
could read Shakespeare for the hour together, and did read him 
aloud to her father in a fresh, clear voice that was like music on 
the water. And she read Macaulay’s “History of England,” 
with eyes that kindled when the historian’s pages flamed out 
with burning words that were like the characters upon a blaz¬ 
ing scroll. She could play Mendelssohn and Beethoven—plaint¬ 
ive sonatas, tender songs, that had no need of words to expound 
the mystic meaning of the music. She could sing old ballads 
and Irish melodies, that thrilled the souls of those who heard 
her, and made hard men pitiful to brazen Hibernian beggars in 
the London streets for the memory of that pensive music. She 
could read the leaders in the Times, with no false quantities in 
the Latin quotations, and knew what she was reading about: 
and had her favorites at St. Stephen’s, and adored Lord Palmer¬ 
ston, and was Liberal to the core of her tender young heart. 
She was as brave as a true Englishwoman should be, and would 
have gone to the wars with her old father, and served him as 
his page, or would have followed him into captivity, and tended 
him in prison, if she had lived in the days when there was such 
work for a high-spirited girl to do. 

But she sat opposite Mr. Edward Arundel, and twisted her 
chain round her fingers, and listened for the footsteps of the 
returning mistress of the house. She was like a bashful school¬ 
girl who has danced with an officer at her first ball. And yet 
amidst her shy confusion, her fears that she should seem a*gi- 
tated and embarrassed, her struggles to appear at her ease, there 
was a sort of pleasure in being seated here by the low 
fire with Edward Arundel opposite to her. There was a 
strange pleasure, an almost painful pleasure mingled with her 
feelings in those quiet moments. She w r as acutely conscious 


JOT]K MARCHMOttT'S LEGACY. Ml 

of every sound that broke the stillness—the sighing of the wind 
in the wide chimney; the falling of the cinders on the hearth; 
the occasional snort of one of the sleeping dogs; and the beat¬ 
ing of her own restless heart. And though she dared not lift 
her eyelids to the young soldier’s face, that handsome earnest 
countenance, with the chestnut hair lit up with gleams of gold, 
the firm lips shaded by a brown mustache, the pensive smile, 
the broad white forehead, the dark-blue handkerchief tied 
loosely under a white collar, the careless gray traveling-dress, 
even the attitude of the hand and arm, the bent head drooping 
a little over the fire, were as present to her inner sight as if her 
eyes had kept watch all this time, and had never wavered in 
their steady gaze. 

There is a second sight that is not recognized by grave pro¬ 
fessors of magic; a second sight which common people call 
love. 

But by and by Edward began to talk, and then Miss Lawford 
found courage, and took heart to question him about his wan¬ 
derings in Brittany. She had only been a few weeks in Devon¬ 
shire, she said. Her thoughts went back to the dreary autumn 
in Lincolnshire as she spoke; and she remembered the dull Oc¬ 
tober day upon which her father had come in the girl’s morning- 
room at the Grange with Edward’s farewell letter in his hand. 
She remembered this, and all the talk that there had been about 
the horsewhipping of Mr. Paul Marchmont upon his own thresh¬ 
old. She remembered all the warm discussions, the specula¬ 
tions, the ignorant conjectures, the praise, the blame; and how 
it had been her business to sit by, and listen, and hold her 
peace, except upon that one never-to-be-forgotten night at the 
Rectory, when Paul Marchmont had hinted at something whose 
perfect meaning she had never dared to imagine, but which had, 
somehow or other, mingled vaguely with all her day-dreams 
ever since. 

Was there any truth in that which Paul Marchmont had said 
to her? Was it true that Edward Arundel had never really 
loved his young bride ? 

Letitia had said as much, not once, but twenty times. 

“ It’s quite ridiculous to suppose that he could have ever been 
in love with the poor, dear, sickly thing,” Miss Arundel had ex¬ 
claimed; “it was only the absurd romance of the business that 
captivated him; for Edward is really ridiculously romantic; 
and her father having been a supernumer—it’s no use; I don’t 
think anybody ever did know how many syllables there are in 
that word—and having lived in Oakley Street, and having writ¬ 
ten a pitiful letter to Edward about this motherless daughter, 
and all that sort of thing; just like one of those tiresome old 
novels with a baby left at a cottage-door, and all the s’s looking 
like fs, and the last word of the page repeated at the top of the 
next page, you know. That was why my brother married Miss 
Marchmont, you may depend upon it, Linda; and all I hope is, 
that he’ll be sensible enough to marry again soon, and to have a 
Christian-like wedding, with carriages, and a breakfast, and 
two clergymen; and /should wear white glace silk, with tulle 


288 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 

puffings, and a tulie bonnet (I suppose I must wear a bonnet, 
being only a bridemaid ?), all showered over with clematis, as if 
I’d stood under a clematis-bush when the wind was blowing, 
you know, Linda.” 

With such discourse as this Miss Arundel had frequently en 
tertained her friend; and she had indulged iu numerous in¬ 
nuendoes of an embarrassing nature as to the propriety of old 
friends and school-fellows being united by the endearing tie of 
sister-in-law-hood, and other observations to the like effect. 

Belinda knew that if Edward ever came to love her—when¬ 
ever she did venture to speculate upon such a chance, she never 
dared to come at all near it, but thought of it as a thing that 
might come to pass in half a century or so—if he should 
choose her for his second wife, she knew that she would be 
gladly and tenderly welcomed at Dangerfield. Mrs. Arundel 
had hinted as much as this. Belinda knew how anxiously that 
loving mother hoped that her son might, by and by, form new 
ties, and cease to iead a purposeless life, wasting his brightest 
years in lamentations for his lost bride. She knew all this; and 
sitting opposite to the young man in the fire-light, there was a 
dull pain at her heart, for there was something in the soldier’s 
somber face that told her he had not yet ceased to lament that 
irrevocable past. 

But Mrs. Arundel and Letitia came in presently, and gave ut¬ 
terance to loud rejoicings: and preparations were made for the 
physical comfort of the wanderer—bells were rung, lighted 
wax-candles and a glittering tea-service were brought in, a cloth 
was laid, and cold meats and other comestibles spread forth, 
with that profusion that has made the west country as prover¬ 
bial as the north for its hospitality. I think Miss Lawford 
would have sat opposite the traveler'for a week without asking 
any such commonplace questions as to whether Mr. Arundel 
required refreshment. She had read in her Hort’s “ Pantheon ” 
that the gods sometimes ate and drank like ordinary mortals; 
yet it had never entered into her mind that Edward could be 
hungry. But she now had the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Arun¬ 
del eat a very good dinner, while she herself poured out the tea 
to oblige Letitia, who was in the middle of the third volume of 
a new novel, and went on reading it as coolly as if there had 
been no such person as that handsome young soldier in the 
world. 

“The books must go back to the club to-morrow morning, 
you knowy mamma dear, or I wouldn’t read at tea-time,” the 
young lady remarked apologetically. “ I want to know whether 
he’ll marry Theodora or that nasty Miss St. Leger. Linda thinks 
he’ll marry Miss St. Leger, and be miserable, and Theodora will 
die. I believe Linda likes love-stories to end unhappily. I 
don’t. I hope if he does marry Miss St. Leger—and he’ll be a 
wicked wretch if he does, after the things he has said to Theo¬ 
dora—I hope, if he does, she’ll die—catch cold at a dejeuner at 
Twickenham, or something of that kind, von know: and then 
he’ll marry Theodora afterward and all will end happily Do 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


283 

you know, Linda, I always fancy that you’re like Theodora, and 
that Edward's like him.” 

After which speech Miss Arundel went back to her book, and 
Edward helped himself toasliceof tongue rather awkwardly; 
and Belinda Lawford, who had her hand upon the urn, suffered 
the tea-pot to overflow among the cups and saucers. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

A WIDOWER’S proposal. 

Eor some time after his return Edward Arundel was very rest¬ 
less and gloomy, roaming about the country by himself, under 
the influence of a pretended passion for pedestrianism, reading 
hard for the first time in his life, shutting himself in his dead 
father’s library, and sitting hour after hour in a great easy-chair. 
reading the histories of all the wars that have ever ravaged this 
earth, from the days in which the elephants of a Carthaginian 
ruler trampled upon the soldiery of Rome, to the era of that 
Corsican barrister’s wonderful son, who came out of his simple 
island home to. conquer the civilized half of a world. 

Edward Arundel showed himself a very indifferent brother; 
for, do what she would, Letitia could not induce him to join in 
any of her pursuits. She caused a butt to be set up upon the 
lawn; but all she could say about Belinda’s best gold could not 
bring the young man out upon the grass to watch the two girls 
shooting. He looked at them by stealth sometimes through the 
window-of the library, and sighed as he thought of the blight 
upon his manhood, and of all the things that might have been. 

Might not those things even yet come to pass ? Had he not 
done his duty to the dead; and was he not free now to begin a 
fresh life? His mother was perpetually hinting at some bright 
prospect that lay smiling before him, if he chose to take the 
blossom-bestrewn path that led to that fair country. His sister 
told him still more plainly of a prize that was within his reach, 
if he were but brave enough to stretch out his hand and claim 
the precious treasure for his own. But when he thought of all 
this—when he pondered whether it would not be wise to drop 
the dense curtain of forgetfulness over that sad picture of the 
past—whether it would not be well to let the dead bury their 
dead, and to accept that other blessing which the same Provi¬ 
dence that had blighted his first hope seemed to offer to him 
now— the shadowy phantom of John Marchmont arose out of 
the mystic realms of the dead, and a ghostly voice cried to him- 

“ I charged you with my daughter’s safe-keeping; I trusted 
you with her innocent love; I gave you the custody of her help¬ 
lessness. What have you done to show yourself worthy of my 
faith in you? ’ 

These thoughts tormented the young widower perpetually, and 
deprived him of all pleasure in the congenial society of his sister 
and Belinda Lawford; or infused so sharp a flavor of remorse 
into his cup of enjoyment that pleasure was akin to pain. 

So I don’t know how it was that, in the dusky twilight of a 
f ,right day in early May, nearly two months after his return to 






290 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY . 


Dangerfield, Edward Arundel, coming by chance upon Miss 
Lawford as she sat alone in the deep bay-window, where he had 
found her on his first coming, confessed to her the terrible 
struggle of feeling that made the great trouble of his life, and 
asked her if she was willing to accept a love which, in its 
warmest fervor, was not quite unclouded by the shadows of the 
sorrowful past. 

“ I love you dearly, Linda,” he said; “ I love, I esteem, I ad¬ 
mire you; and I know that it is in your power to give me the 
happiest future that ever a man imagined in his youngest, 
brightest dreams. But if you do accept my love, dear, you must 
take my memory with it. 1 cannot forget, Linda. I have 
tried to forget. I have prayed that God, in His mercy, might 
give me forgetfulness of that irrevocable past. But the prayer 
has never been granted; the boon has never been bestowed. I 
think that love for the living and remorse for the dead must for¬ 
ever reign side by side in my heart. It is no falsehood to you 
that makes me remember her; it is no forgetfulness of her that 
makes me love you. I offer my brighter and happier self 
to you, Belinda; I consecrate my sorrow and my tears to 
her. I love you with all my heart, Belinda; but even for the 
sake of your love I will not pretend that I can forget her. If 
John Marchmont’s daughter had died with her head upon my 
breast and a prayer on her lips, T might have regretted her as 
other men regret their wives, and I might have learned by and 
by to look back upon my grief with only a tender and natural 
regret, that would have left my future life unclouded. But it 
can never be so. The poison of remorse is blended with that 
sorrowful memory. If I had done otherwise—if I had been 
wiser and more thoughtful—my darling need never have suf¬ 
fered; my darling need never have sinned. It is the thought 
that her death may have been a sinful one that is most cruel to 
me, Belinda. I have seen her pray, with her pale, earnest face 
uplifted, and the light of faith shining in her gentle eyes; I have 
seen the inspiration of God upon her face; and I cannot bear to 
think that, in the darkness that came down upon her young 
life, that holy light was quenched; I cannot bear to think that 
Heaven was ever deaf to the pitiful cry of my innocent 
lamb.” 

And here Mr. Arundel paused and sat silently looking out at 
the long shadows of the trees upon the darkening lawn; and I 
fear that, for the time being, he forgot that be had just made 
Miss Lawford an offer of his hand and so much of his heart as a 
widower may be supposed to have at his disposal. 

Ah me! we can only live and die once. There are some things, 
and those the most beautiful of all things, that can never be re¬ 
newed: the bloom on a butterfly’s wing; the morning dew upon 
a newly-blown rose; our first view of the ocean; our first panto¬ 
mime, when all the fairies were fairies forever, and when the 
imprudent consumption of the contents of a pewter quart meas¬ 
ure in sight of the stage-box could not disenchant us with that 
elfin creature Harlequin, the graceful, faithful betrothed of 
Columbine the fair. The firstlings of life are most precious. 


JOHN MaBCBMONT'S LEGACY. 291 

When the black wing of the Angel of Death swept o er 
agonized Egypt, and the children were smitten, offended 
Heaven, eager for a sacrifice, took the first-horn. The young 
mothers would have other children, perhaps; but between those 
others and the mother’s love there would be the pale shadow of 
that lost darling whose tiny hands first drew undreamed-of 
melodies from the sleeping chords, first evoked the slumbering 
spirit of maternal love. Among the latter lines—the most pas¬ 
sionate, the most sorrowful—that George Gordon Noel Byron 
wrote, are some brief verses that breathed a lament for the lost 
freshness, the never-to-be-recovered youth: 

“Oh, could I feel as I have felt; or be what 1 have been: 

Or weep as I could once have wept!” 
cried the poet when he complained of that “mortal coldness of 
the soul,” which is “ like death itself.” 

Edward Arundel had grown to love Belinda Lawford uncon¬ 
sciously, and in spite of himself; but the first love of his heart, 
the first fruit of bis youth, had perished. He could not feel 
quite the same devotion, the same boyish chivalry, that he had 
felt for the innocent bride whq^ad wandered beside him in the 
sheltered meadows near Winchester. He might begin a new 
life, but he could uot live the old life over again. He must 
wear his rue with a difference this time. But he loved Belinda 
very dearly, nevertheless; and he told her so, and by and by 
won from her a tearful avowal of affection. 

Alas! she had no power to question the manner of his wooing. 
He loved her—he had said as much; and all the good she had 
desired in this universe became hers from the moment of Ed¬ 
ward Arundel’s utterance of those words. He loved her; that 
was enough. That he should cherish a remorseful sorrow for 
that lost wife made him only the truer, nobler, and dearer in 
Belinda’s sight. She was not vain, or exacting, or selfish. It 
was not in her nature to begrudge poor dead Mary the tender 
thoughts of her husband. She was generous, impulsive, be¬ 
lieving; and she had no more inclination to doubt Edward’s love 
for her, after he had once avowed such a sentiment, than to 
disbelieve in the light of heaven when she saw the sun shining. 
Unquestioning, and unutterably happy, she received her lover’s 
betrothal kiss, and went with him to* his mother, blushing and 
trembling, to receive that lady’s blessing. 

“Ah, if you knew how I have prayed for this, Linda!” Mrs. 
Arundel exclaimed, as she folded the girl’s slight figure in her 
arms. 

“And I shall wear white glace with pinked flounces, instead 
of tulle puffings, you sly Linda,” cried Letitia. 

“ And 1*11 give Ted the home farm, and the white house to 
Jive in, if he likes to try his hand at the new system of farm¬ 
ing,” said Reginald Arundel, who had come home from the 
Continent, and had amused himself for the last week by stroll¬ 
ing about his estate, and staring at his timber, and almost wish¬ 
ing that there was a necessity for cutting down all the oaks in 
the avenue, so that he might have something to occupy him 
until the 12th of August, 


m 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 


Never was promised bride more welcome to a household than 
bright Belinda Law ford; and as for the young lady herself, I 
must confess that she was almost childishly happy, and that it 
was all that she could do to prevent her light step from falling 
into a dance as she floatei hither and thither through the house 
at Dangerfield—a fresh young Hebe in crisp muslin robes; a 
gentle goddess, with smiles upon her face and happiness in her 
heart. 

“ i loved you from the first, Edward,” she whispered one day 
to her lover. ‘‘I knew that you were good, and brave, and 
noble; and I loved you because of that.” 

And a little for the golden glimmer in his clustering auburn 
curls; and a little for his handsome profile, his dark blue eyes, 
and that distinguished air peculiar to the defenders of their 
country, more especially peculiar, perhaps, to those who ride on 
horseback when they sally forth to defend her. Once a soldier 
forever a soldier, I "think. You may rob the noble warrior of 
his uniform, if you will; but the je ne saiu quoi, the nameless 
air of the “long-sword, saddle, bridle,” will hang round him 
still. 

Mrs. Arundel and Letitia took matters quite out of the hands 
of the two lovers. The elder lady fixed the wedding day, by 
agreement with Major Lawford, and sketched out the wedding- 
tour. The younger lady chose the fabrics for the dresses of the 
bride and her attendants; and all was done before Edward and 
Belinda well knew what their friends were about. I think that 
Mrs. Arundel feared her son might change his mind if matters 
were not brought swiftly to a climax, and that she hurried on 
the irrevocable day in order that he might have no breathing¬ 
time until the vows had been spoken and Belinda Lawford was 
his wedded wife. It had been arranged that Edward should 
escort Belinda back to Lincolnshire, and that his mother and 
Letitia, who was to be chief bridemaid, should go with them. 
The marriage was to be solemnized at Hillingsworth Church, 
which was within a mile and a half of the Grange. 

The 1st of July was the day appointed by agreement between 
Major and Mrs. Lawford and Mrs. Arundel, and on the 18th of 
June Edward was to accompany his mother, Letitia, and Be¬ 
linda to Lincolnshire. They were to break the journey by stop¬ 
ping in town for a few days, in order to make a great many 
purchases necessary for Miss Lawford’s wedding paraphernalia, 
for which the major had sent a bouncing check to his favorite 
daughter. 

And all this time the only person at all unsettled, the only 
person whose mind was ill at ease, was Edward Arundel; the 
young widower who w T as about to take to himself a second wife. 
His mother, who watched him with a maternal comprehension 
of every change in his face, saw this, and trembled for her son’s 
happiness. 

“ And yet he cannot be otherwise than happy with Belinda 
Lawford,” Mrs. Arundel thought to herself. 

But upon the eve of that journey to London Edward sat alone 
with his mother in the drawing-room at Dangerfield, after the 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 


293 


two younger ladies had retired Tor the night. They slept in ad¬ 
joining apartments, these two young ladies; and I regret to say 
that a great deal of their conversation was about Valenciennes 
lace, and flounces cut upon the cross, moire antique, mull mus¬ 
lin, glace silk, and the last “ sweet thing ” in bonnets. It was 
only when loquacious Letitia was shut out that Miss Lawford 
knelt alone in the still moonlight, and prayed that she might be 
a good wife to the man who had chosen her. I don’t think she 
ever prayed that she might be faithful, and true, and pure; for 
it never entered into her mind that any creature bearing the 
sacred name of wife could be otherwise. She only prayed for 
the mysterious power to preserve her husband’s affection, and 
make his life happy. 

Mrs. Arundel, sitting tete-a-tete with her younger son in the 
lamp-lit drawing-room, was startled by hearing the young man 
breathe a deep sigh. She looked up from her work to see a sad¬ 
der expression in his face than perhaps ever clouded the counte¬ 
nance of an expectant bridegroom. 

“ Edward!” she exclaimed'. 

“ What, mother?” 

“ How heavily you sighed just now!” 

“ Did I?” said Mr. Arundel, abstractedly. Then, after a brief 
pause, he said, in a different tone, “It’s no use trying to hide 
these things from you, mother. The truth is, I am not happy.” 

“Not happy, Edward!” cried Mrs. Arundel; “but surely 
you-” 

“ I know what you are going to say, mother. Yes, mother, I 
love this dear girl, Linda, with all my heart. I love her most 
sincerely; and I could look forward to a life of unalloyed hap¬ 
piness with her, if—if there was not some inexplicable dread, 
some vague and most miserable feeling always coming between 
me and my hopes. I have tried to look forward to the future, 
mother; I have tried to think of what my life may be with 
Belinda; but I cannot, I cannot. I cannot look forward; all is 
dark to me. I try to build up a bright palace, and an unknown 
hand shatters it. I try to turn away from the memory of my 
old sorrow's; but the same hand plucks me back, and chains me 
to the past. If I could retract what I have done; if I could, 
with any show of honor, draw back, even now, and not go upon 
this journey to Lincolnshire; if I could break my faith to this 
poor girl who loves me, and whom I love, as God knows, with 
all truth and earnestness—I would do so; I would do so.” 

“Edward!” 

“ Yes, mother, I would do it. It is not in me to forget. My 
dead wife haunts me by night and day. I hear her voice cry¬ 
ing to me, ‘ False, false, false; cruel and false; heartless and 
forgetful!’ There is never a night that I do not dream of that 
dark, sluggish river, down in Lincolnshire. There is never a 
dream that I have, however ridiculous, however inconsistent in 
all its other details, in which I do not see her dead face looking 
up at me through the murky waters. Even when I am talking 
to Linda, when words of love for her are on my lips, my mind 
■wanders away back—always back—to the sunset by the boat 


291 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


house when my little wife gave me her hand; to the trout- 
stream in the meadow where we sat side by side and talked 
about the future." 

For a few minutes Mrs. Arundel was quite silent. She aban¬ 
doned herself for that brief interval to complete despair. It was 
all over. The bridegroom would cry off; insulted Major Law- 
ford would come post-haste to Dangerfield, to annihilate this 
dismal widower, who did not know his own mind. All the 
shimmering fabrics—the gauzes, and laces, and silks, aud velvets 
—that were in course of preparation in the upper chambers 
would become so much useless finery, to be hidden inout-of-tbe- 
way cupboards, and devoured by misanthropical moths—insect 
iconoclasts, who take a delight in destroying the decorations of 
the human temple. 

Poor Mrs. Arundel took a mental photograph of all the com¬ 
plicated horrors of the situation. An offended father; a gentle, 
loving girl crushed like some broken lily; gossip, slander, misery 
of all kinds. And then the lady plucked up courage, and gave her 
recreant son a sound lecture, to the effect that his conduct was 
atrociously wicked; and that if this trusting young bride, this 
fair young second wife, were to be taken away from him as the 
first had been, such a calamity would only be a fitting judgment 
upon him for his folly. 

But Edward told his mother very quietly that he had no in¬ 
tention of being false to his newly-plighted troth. 

•‘I love Belinda,” he said; “and I will be true to her, 
mother. But I cannot forget the past. It hangs about me 
like a bad dream.” 


CHAPTER XXXV, 

HOW THE TIDINGS WERE RECEIVED IN LINCOLNSHIRE. 

The young widower made no further lamentation, but did his 
duty to his betrothed bride with a cheerful visage. Ah, what a 
pleasant journey it was to Belinda, that progress through Lon¬ 
don on the way to Lincolnshire! It was like that triumphant 
journey of last March, when the royal bridegroom led his north¬ 
ern bride through a surging sea of eager, smiling faces, to the 
musical jangling of a thousand bells. If there were neither 
populace nor joybells on this occasion, I scarcely think Miss Law- 
ford knew that those elements of a triumphal progress were 
missing. To her ears all the universe was musical with the 
sounds of mystic joy-bells; all the earth was glad with the 
brightness of happy faces. The railway-carriage, the common¬ 
place vehicle, frouzy with the odor of wool and morocco, was a 
fairy chariot, more wonderful than Queen Mab’s; the white 
chalk-cutting in the hill was a shining cleft in a mountain of 
silver; the wandering streams were melted diamonds: the sta¬ 
tions were enchanted castles. The pale sherry, carried in a 
pocket-flask, and sipped out of a little silver tumbler—there is 
apt to be warm flatness about sherry taken out of pocket-flasks 
tijat is scarcely agreeable'to the connoisseur—was like nectar 
newly brewed for the gods; even the anchovies in the sandwiches 



JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


295 


wpre like the enchanted fish in the Arabian story, A magical 
philter had been infused into the atmosphere; the flavor of first 
love was in every sight and sound. 

Was ever bridegroom more indulgent, more devoted, than 
Edward Arundel? He sat at the counters of silk-mercers for 
the hour together, while Mrs. Arundel and the two girls de¬ 
liberated over crisp fabrics unfolded for their inspection. He 
was always ready to be consulted, and gave his opinion upon 
the conflicting merits of peach color and pink, apple-green and 
maize, with unwearying attention But sometimes, even while 
Belinda was smiling at him, with the rippling silken stuff held 
up in her white hands, and making a lustrous cascade upon the 
counter, the mystic hand plucked him back, and his mind 
wandered away to that childish bride who had chosen no splen¬ 
did garment for her wedding, but had gone with him to the 
altar as trustfully as a baby goes in its mother’s arms to the 
cradle. If he had been left alone with Belinda, with tender, 
sympathetic Belinda—who loved him well enough to understand 
him, and was always ready to take her cue from his face, and 
to be joyous or thoughtful according to his mood—it might 
have been better for him. But his mother and Letitia reigned 
paramount during this ante-nuptial week, and Mr. Arundel was 
scarcely suffered to take breath. He was hustled hither and 
thither in the hot summer noontide. He was taken to Howell 
& James’ to choose a dressing case for his bride; and he was 
made to look at glittering objects until his eyes ached, and he 
could see nothing but a bewildering dazzle of ormolu and silver- 
gilt. He was taken to a great emporium in Bond Street to 
select perfumery, and made to sniff at divers essences until his 
nostrils were unnaturally distended, and his olfactory nerves 
afflicted with temporary paralysis. 

There was jewelry of his mother’s and of Belinda’s mother’s 
to be reset; and the hymeneal victim was compelled to sit for 
an hour or so, blinking at fiery-crested serpents that were des¬ 
tined to coil up bis wife’s arms, and emerald padlocks that 
were to lie upon her breast. And then, when his soul was 
weary of glaring splendors and glittering confusions, they took 
him round the park, in a whirlpool of diaphanous bonnets, and 
smiling faces, and brazen harness, and emblazoned hammer- 
cloths, on the margin of a river whose Waters were like molten 
gold under the blazing sun. And then they gave him a seat 
in an opera-box, and the crash of a monster orchestra, blended 
with the hum of a thousand voices, to soothe his nerves withal. 

But the more wearied this young man became with glitter, 
and dazzle, and sunshine, and silk-mercer’s ware, the more 
surely his mind wandered back to the still meadows, and the 
limpid trout-stream, the sheltering hills, the solemn shadows 
of the cathedral, the distant voices of the rooks high up in the 
waving elms. 

The bustle of preparation was over at last, and the bridal 
party went down to Lincolnshire. Pleasant chambers had been 
prepared at the Grange for Mr. Arundel and his mother and 
gister; and the bridegroom was received with enthusiasm by 


JOHN MARCHMONTS LEGACY, 


?96 

Belinda’s blue-eyed younger sisters, who were enchanted to 
find that there was going to be a wedding, and that they were 
to have new frocks. 

So Edward would have been a churl indeed had he seemed 
otherwise than happy, had he been anything but devoted to the 
bright girl who loved him. 

Tidings of the coming wedding flew like wild-fire through 
Lincolnshire. Edward Arundel’s romantic story bad elevated 
him into a hero; all manner of reports had been circulated 
about his devotion to his lost young wife. He had sworn 
never to mingle in society again, people said. He had sworn 
never to have a new suit of clothes, or to have his hair cut, or 
to shave, or to eat a hot dinner. And Lincolnshire by no means 
approved of the defection implied by his approaching union 
with Belinda. He was only a common-place widower after all, 
it seemed; ready to be consoled as soon as the ceremonious in¬ 
terval of recent grief was over. People had expected something 
better of him. They had expected to see him in a year or two 
with long gray hair, shabby clothes, and his beard upon his 
breast, prowling about the village of Kemberling, baited by 
little children. Lincolnshire was very much disappointed by 
the turn that affairs had taken. Shakespearean aphorisms were 
current among the gossips at comfortable tea-tables; and 
people talked about funeral baked meats, and the propriety of 
building churches if you have any ambitious desire that your 
memory should outlast your life, and other bitter observations, 
familiar to all admirers of the great dramatist. 

But there were some people in Lincolnshire to whom the 
news of Edw^ard Arundel’s intended marriage was more wel¬ 
come than the early May-flow ? ers to rustic children eager for a 
festival. Paul Marchmont heard the report, and rubbed his 
hands stealthily, and smiled to himself as he sat reading in the 
sirnny western drawing-room. The good seed that he had sown 
that night at the Rectory had borne this welcome fruit. Ed¬ 
ward Arundel with a young wife would be very much less form¬ 
idable than Edward Arundel single and discontented, prowling 
about the neighborhood of Marchmont Towers, and perpetually 
threatening vengeance upon Mary’s cousin. 

It was busy little Lavinia Weston who first brought her 
brother the tidings. He took both of her hands in his. and 
kissed them in his enthusiasm. 

“ Mv best of sisters,” he said, “ you shall have a pair of dia¬ 
mond ear-rings for this.” 

*' For only bringing you the news, Paul ?” 

“ For only bringing me the new 7 s. When a messenger carries 
the tidings of a great victory to his king, the king makes him a 
knight upon the spot. This marriage is a victory to me, Lavinia. 
From to-day I shall breathe freely.” 

“ But they are not married yet. Something may happen, per¬ 
haps, to prevent——” 

“What should happen?” asked Paul, rather sharply. “By 
the bye, it will be as w^ell to keep this from Mrs. John,” he 


JOHN MARCmrONT'S LEGACY, 2 §? 

added, thoughtfully; “though really now I fancy it., matters, 
very little what she hears.” 

He tapped his forehead lightly with his two slim fingers, and 
there was a horrible significance in the action. 

“ She is not likely to hear anything,” Mrs. Weston said; “ she 
sees no one but Barbara Simmons.” 

“ Then I should be glad if you would give Simmons a hint to 
hold her tongue. This news about the wedding would disturb 
her mistress.” 

“ Yes, I’ll tell her so. Barbara is a very excellent person. I 
can always manage Barbara. But, oh, Paul, I don’t know what 
I’m to do with that poor weak-witted husband of mine.” 

“ How do you mean?” 

“ Oh, Paul, I have had such a scene with him to-day. Such 
a scene! You remember the way he went on that day down in 
the boat-house when Edward Arundel came in upon us unex¬ 
pectedly ? Well, he’s been going on as badly as that to-day, 
Paul—or worse, I really think.” 

Mr. Marchmont frowned, and flung aside his newspaper, with 
a gesture expressive of considerable vexation. 

“Now, really, Lavinia, this is too bad,” he said; “if your 
husband is a fool, I am not going to be bored about his folly. 
You have managed him for fifteen years: surely you can go on 
managing him now without annoying me about him ? If Mr. 
George Weston doesn’t know when he’s well off, he’s an un¬ 
grateful cur, and you may tell him so, with my compliments.” 

He picked up his newspaper again, and began to read. But 
Lavinia Weston, looking anxiously at her brother’s face, saw 
that his pale auburn brows were contracted in a thoughtful 
frown, and that, if he read at all, the words upon which his 
eyes rested could convey very little meaning to his brain. 

She was right; for presently he spoke to her, still looking at 
the page before him, and with an attempt at carelessness. 

“ Do you think that fellow would go to Australia, Lavinia?” 

“ Alone?” asked his sister. 

“ Yes, alone, of course,” said Mr. Marchmont, putting down 
his paper, and looking at Mrs. Weston rather dubiously; “ I 
don’t want you to go to the antipodes; but if—if the fellow re¬ 
fused to go without you, I’d make it well worth your while to 
go out there, Lavinia. You shouldn’t have any reason to regret 
obliging me, my dear girl.” 

The dear girl looked rather sharply at her affectionate brother. 

“ It’s like your selfishness, Paul, to propose such a thing,” she 
said, “ after all I’ve done-” 

“ T have not been illiberal to you, Lavinia.” 

“No, you’ve been generous enough to me, I know, in the 
matter of gifts: but vou’re rich, Paul, and you can afford to 
give. I don’t like the idea that you’re so willing to pack me 
out of the way now that I can be no longer useful to you.” 

Mr. Marchmont shrugged his shoulders. 

“ For Heaven’s sake, Lavinia, don't be sentimental. If there’s 
one thing I despise more than another, it is this kind of mawk¬ 
ish sentimentality. You’ve been a very good sister to me; and 


298 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY . 


I’ve been a very decent brother to you. If you have served me, 
I have made it answer your purpose to do so. I don’t want you 
to go away. You rhay bring all your goods and chattels io this 
house to-morrow, if you like, and live at free quarters here for 
the rest of your existence. But if George Weston is a pig¬ 
headed brute, who can’t understand upon which side his bread 
is buttered, he must be got out of the way somehow. I don’t 
care what it costs me; but he must be got out of the way. I’m 
not going to live the life of a modern Damocles, with a blunder¬ 
ing sword always dangling over my head, in the person of Mr. 
George Weston. And if the man objects to leave the country 
without you, why, I think your going with him would be only 
a sisterly act toward me. I hate selfishness, Lavinia, almost as 
much as I detest sentimentality.” 

Mrs. Weston was silent for some minutes, absorbed in reflec¬ 
tion. Paul got up, kicked aside a foot stool, and walked up and 
down the room with his hands in his pockets. 

** Perhaps I might get George to leave England, if I promised 
to join him as soon as he was comfortably settled in the colo¬ 
nies,” Mrs. Weston said, at last. 

“Yes,” cried Paul, “nothing could be more easy. I’ll act 
very liberally toward him, Lavinia; I’ll treat him well; but he 
shall not staydn England. No, Lavinia; after what you have 
told me to-day, I feel that he must be got out of the country.” 

Mr. Marchmont went to the door and looked out, to see if by 
chance any one had been listening to him. The coast was quite 
clear. The stone-paved hall looked as desolate as some undis¬ 
covered chamber in an Egyptian temple. The artist Went back 
to Lavinia, and seated himself by her side. For some time the 
brother'and sister talked together earnestly. 

They settled everything for poor hen-pecked George Weston. 
He was to sail for Sydney immediately. Nothing could be 
more easy than for Lavinia "to declare that her brother had acci¬ 
dentally heard of some grand opening for a medical practitioner 
In the metropolis of the antipodes. The surgeon was to have a 
very handsome sum given him, and Lavinia would, of course, 
join him as soon as he was settled. Paul Marchmont even 
looked through the Shipping Gazette in search of an Australian 
vessel which should speedily convey his brother-in-law to a dis¬ 
tant shore. 

Lavinia Weston went home armed with all necessary creden¬ 
tials. She was to promise almost anything to her husband, pro¬ 
vided that he gave his consent to an early departure. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

MR. WESTON REFUSES TO BE PUT UPON. 

Upon the 31st of June, the eve of Edward Arundel’s wedding- 
day, Olivia Marchmont sat in her own room—the room that she 
"had chiefly occupied ever since her husband’s death—the study 
looking out into the quadrangle. She sat alone in that dismal 
chamber, dimly lighted by a pair of wax candles, in tall, tar¬ 
nished silver candlesticks". There could be no greater contrast 



JOTJX MATtCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


m 


than that between this desolate woman and the master of the 
bouse. All about him was bright, and fresh, and glittering, 
and splendid; around her there was only ruin and decay, thick¬ 
ening dust, and gathering cobwebs—outvrard evidences of an 
inner wreck, John Marchmont’s widow was of no importance 
in that household. The servants did not care to trouble them¬ 
selves about her whims or wishes, nor to put her rooms in order. 
They no longer courtesied to her when they met her, wandering 
—with a purposeless step and listless feet that dragged along 
the ground—up and down the corridor, or out in the dreary 
quadrangles. They knew that she was mad. What was to be 
gained by any show of respect to her, whose brain was too 
weak to hold the memory of their conduct for five minutes 
together ? Of all the cruel calamities that can befall humanity, 
surely this living death called madness is the worst. 

Barbara Simmons only was faithful to her mistress with an 
unvarying fidelity. She made no boast of her devotion; she ex¬ 
pected neither fee nor reward for her self-abnegation. That 
rigid religion of discipline which had not been strong enough to 
preserve Olivia’s stormy soul from danger and ruin was at least 
all-sufficient for this lower type of woman. Barbara Simmons 
had been taught to do her duty, and she did it without question 
or complaint. As she went through rain, snow, hail or sun¬ 
shine twice every Sunday to Kemberling Church—as she sat 
upon a hard seat in an uncomfortable angle of the servants’ pew, 
with the sharp edges of the wood-work cutting her thin shoul¬ 
ders, to listen patiently to dull rambling sermons upon the 
hardest texts of St. Paul—so she attended upon her mistress, 
submitting to every caprice, putting up with every hardship; 
because it was her duty so to do. The only relief she allowed 
herself was an hour’s gossip now and then in the housekeeper’s 
room; but she never alluded to her mistress’ infirmities, nor 
would it have been safe for any other servant to bave^spoken 
lightly of Mrs. John Marchmont in stern Barbara’s presence. 

Upon this summer evening, when happy people were still 
lingering among the wild flowers in shady lanes, or in the dusky 
pathways by the quiet river, Olivia sat alone, staring at th'i 
candles. 

Was there anything in her mind, or was she only a human 
automaton slowly decaying into dust? There was no specula 
tion in those large lusterless eyes fixed upon the dim light of 
ihe candles. But for all that the mind was not a blank. The 
pictures of the past, forever changing, like the scenes in some 
magic panorama, revolved before her. She had no memory of 
that which had happened a quarter of an hour ago; but she 
could remember every word that Edward Arundel had said to 
her in the Rectory garden at Swampington—every intonatiou 
of the voice in which those words were spoken. 

There was a tea-service on the table: an attenuated little silver 
tea-pot; a lopsided cream-jug, with thin worn edges and one 
dumpy little foot missing; and an antique dragon china cup and 
saucer with the gilding washed off. That meal, which is gener¬ 
ally called social, has but a dismal aspect when it is only pre- 


800 


TORN MAnOmfONT’S LEGACY. 


pared for ohe. The solitary tea-cup, half filled with cold, stag¬ 
nant tea, with a leaf or two floating upon the top like weeds 
an the surface of a tideless pond; the teaspoon thrown askew 
a cress a little pool of spilled milk in the tea-tray—looked as 
dreary as the ruins of a deserted city. . 

In the western drawing-room Paul was strolling backward 
and forward, talking to his mother and sisters, and admiring 
his pictures. He had spent a great deal of money upon art since 
taking possession of the Towels, and the western drawing-room 
was quite a different place to what it had been in John March- 
nionfs lifetime. 

Etty’s divinities smiled through hazy draperies, more trans¬ 
parent than the summer vapors that float before the moon. 
Pearly-complexioned nymphs, with faces archly peeping round 
the corner of soft rosy shoulders, frolicked amidst the silver 
spray of classic fountains. Turner’s Grecian temples glimmered 
through sultry summer mists; while glimpses of ocean sparkled 
here and there, and were as beautiful as if the artist’s brush had 
been dipped in melted opals. Stanfield’s breezy beaches made 
cool spots of freshness on the wall. Panting deer upon dizzy 
crags, amid the misty Highlands, testified to the hand of Land¬ 
seer. Low down, in the corners of the room, were lurking 
quaint cottage-scenes by Faed. Ward’s patched and powdered 
beaus and beauties—a Rochester, in a light periwig; a Nell 
Gwynne, showing her white teeth across a basket of oranges— 
made a blaze of color upon the walls; and among all these glories 
of to-day there were prim Madonnas and stiff-necked angels by 
Raphael and Tintoretto; a brown-faced grinning boy by Murillo 
(no collection ever w T as complete without that inevitable brown¬ 
faced boy); an obese Venus, by the great Peter Paul; and a pale 
Charles the First, with martyrdom foreshadowed in his pensive 
face, by Vandyke. 

Paul Marchmont contemplated his treasures complacently as 
he strolled about the room, with his coffee-cup in his hand; 
while his mother watched him admiringly from her comfort¬ 
able cushioned nest at one end of a luxurious sofa. 

“ Well, mother,” Mr. Marchmont said, presently, “let peo¬ 
ple say what they may of me, they can never say that I have 
used my money badly. When I am dead and gone these 
pictures will remain to speak for me; posterity will say, ‘ At 
any rate the fellow was a man of taste.’ Now what, in 
Heaven’s name, could that miserable little Mary have done 
with eleven thousand a year, if—if she had lived to enjoy it?’’ 

The minute-hand of the little clock in Mrs. John March- 
mont’s study was creeping slowly toward the quarter before 
eleven, when Olivia was aroused suddenly from that long 
reverie, in which the images of the past had shone upon-her 
across the dull stagnation of the present, like the domes and 
minarets in a phantasm city gleaming athwart the barren des¬ 
ert sands. 

She was aroused by a cautious tap upon the outside of her 
window. She got up, opened the window, and looked out. 
The night was dark and starless, and there was a faint wbis- 


JOHN MARCHMONT 'S LEGACY . 801 

per of wind among the trees, that sounded like the presage of a 
storm. 

“ Don’t be frightened,” whispered a timid voice; “ it’s only 
me, George Weston. I want to talk to you, Mrs. John. I’ve 
got something particular to tell you—awful particular; but 
they mustn’t hear it; they mustn’t know I’m here. I came 
round this way on purpose. You can let me in at the little 
door in the lobby, can’t you, Mrs. John? I tell you I must 
tell you what I’ve got to tell you,” cried Mr. Weston, indif¬ 
ferent to tautology in his excitement. “ Do let me in, there’s 
a dear soul. The little door in the lobby, you know; it’s locked, 
you know, but the key ain’t taken away, I dessay.” 

“ The door in the lobby ?” repeated Olivia, in a dreamy voice. 

“ Yes, you know. Do let me in now, that’s a good creature. 
It’s awful particular, I tell you. It’s about Edward Arundel.” 

Edward Arundel I The sound of that name seemed to act 
upon the woman’s shattered nerves like a stroke of electricity. 
The drooping head reared itself erect. The eyes, so lusterless 
before, flashed fire from their somber depths. Comprehension, 
animation, energy returned, as suddenly as if the wand of an 
enchanter had summoned the dead back to life. 

‘ Edward Arundel!” she cried, in a clear voice, that was 
utterly unlike the dull deadness of her usual tones. 

“Hush!” whispered Mr. Weston; “don’t speak loud, for 
goodness gracious sake. I dessay there's all manner of spies 
about. Let me in, and I’ll tell you everything.” 

“ Yes, yes; I’ll let you in. The door by the lobby—I under¬ 
stand; come, come.” 

Olivia disappeared from the window. The lobby of which the 
surgeon had spoken was close to her own apartment. She found 
the key in the lock of the door. The place was dark; she 
opened the door almost noiselessly, and Mr. Weston crept in on 
tip toe. He followed Olivia into the study, closed the door 
behind him, and drew a long breath. 

“I’ve got in,” he said; “and now I am in, wild horses 
shouldn’t hold me from speaking my mind, much less Paul 
Marchmont.” 

He turned the key in the door as he spoke, and, even as lie 
did so, glanced rather suspiciously toward the window. To his 
mind the very atmosphere of that house was pervaded by the 
presence of his brother-in-law. 

“ Oh, Mrs. John!” exclaimed the surgeon, in piteous accents, 
“ the way that I’ve been put upon! You've been put upon, Mrs. 
John, but you don’t seem to mind it; and perhaps it’s better to 
bring one’s self to that, if one can; but I can’t. I’ve tried to 
bring myself to it; I’ve even taken to drinking, Mrs. John, much 
as it goes against me; and I’ve tried to drown my feelings 
as a man in rum-and-water. But the more spirits I consume, 
Mrs. John, the more of a man I feel.” 

Mr. Weston struck the top of his hat with his clinched fist, 
and stared fiercely at Olivia, breathing very hard, and breathing 
rum-and-water with a faint odor of lemon-peel. 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


302 

“Edward Arundel!—what about Edward Arundel?” said 
Olivia, in a low, eager voice. 

“ I’m coming to that, Mrs. John, in due c’course,” returned 
Mr. Weston, with an air of dignity that was superior even to 
hiccough. “ What I say, Mrs. John,” he added, in a confidential 
and argumentative tone, “ is this: I won't be put upon /” Here 
his voice sank to an awful whisper. “Of course it’s pleasant 
enough to have one’s rent provided for, and not to be kept 
awake by poors-rates, Mrs. John; but, good gracious me! I’d 
rather have the queen’s taxes and the poor-rates following me 
up day and night, and a man in possession to provide for at 
every meal—and you don’t know how contemptuous a man in 
possession can look at you if you offer him salt butter, or your 
table in a general way don’t meet his views—than the conscience 
I’ve had since Paul Marchmont came into Lincolnshire. I feel, 
Mrs. John, as if I’d committed oceans of murdeis. It’s a mira¬ 
cle to me that my hair hasn’t turned white before this; and it 
would have done it, Mrs. J., if it wasn’t of that stubborn 
nature which is too wiry to give expression to a man’s suffer¬ 
ings. Oh, Mrs. John, when I think how my pangs of con¬ 
science have been made game of—when I remember the in¬ 
sulting names I’ve been called, because my heart didn’t happen 
to be made of adamant, my blood boils; it boils, Mrs. John, 
to that degree that l feel the time has come for action. I have 
been put upon until the spirit of manliness within me blazes up 
like a fiery furnace. I’ve been trodden upon, Mrs. John; but 
I’m not the worm they took me for. To-day they’ve put the 
finisher upon it.” The surgeon paused to take breath. His 
mild and rather sheep-like countenance was flushed, his fluffy 
eyebrows twitched convulsively in his endeavors to give expres¬ 
sion to the violence of his feelings. “To-dav they’ve put the 
finisher upon it,” he repeated. “ I'm to go to Australia, am Ir 
Ha! ha! we’ll see about that. There's a nice opening in the 
medical line, is there? and dear Paul will provide the funds to 
start me! Ha! hal two can play at that game. It’s all 
brotherly kindness, of course, and friendly interest in mj 7 wel¬ 
fare—that’s what it’s called , Mrs. J. Shall I tell you what it is ? 
I’m to be got rid of at any price, for fear my conscience should 
get the better of me, and I should speak. I’ve been made a tool 
of, and I’ve been put upon; but they’ve been obliged, to trust 
me. I’ve got a conscience, and I don’t suit their views. If I 
hadn't got a conscience, I might stop here and have my rent 
and taxes provided for, and riot in rum-and-water to the end of 
my days. But I’ve a conscience that all the pine-apple rum in 
Jamaica wouldn’t drown, and they’re frightened of me.” 

Olivia had listened to all this with an impatient frown 
upon her face. I doubt if she knew the meaning of Mr. 
Weston’s complaints. She had been listening only for the one 
name that had power to transform her from a breathing autom¬ 
aton into a living, thinking, reasoning woman. She grasped 
the surgeon’s wrist, fiercely. 

“ You told me you came here to speak about Edward 


JOHN MAItCHMONT'8 LEGACY. 308 

Arundel,” she said. “ Have you been only trying to make a 
fool of me ?” 

“ No, Mrs. John; I have come to speak about him, and I come 
to you, because I think you’re not so bad as Paul Marchmont. 
I think that you’ve been a tool, like myself; and they’ve led you 
on, step by step, from bad to worse, pretty much as they have 
led me. You’re Edward Arundel’s blood-relation, and it’s your 
business to look to any wrong that’s done him more that it is 
mine. But if you don’t speak, Mrs. John, I will. Edward 
Arundel is going to be married.” 

“ Going to be married!” The words burst from Olivia’s lips in 
a kind of shriek, and she stood glaring hideously at the sur¬ 
geon, with her lips apart and her eyes dilated. Mr. Weston 
was fascinated hy the horror of that gaze, and stared at her in 
silence for some moments. “ You are a madman!” she ex¬ 
claimed, after a pause; “you are a madman! Why do you 
come here with your idiotic fancies? Surely my life is misera¬ 
ble enough without this?” 

“ I ain’t mad, Mrs. John, any more than-” Mr. Weston was 

going to say “ than you are;” but it struck him that, under ex¬ 
isting circumstances, the comparison might be ill-advised—“ I 
ain’t any madder than other people,” he said, presently. “ Ed¬ 
ward Arundel is going to be married. I have seen the young 
lady in Kemberling with her pa; and she’s a very sweet young 
woman to look at; and her name’s Belinda Lawford; and the 
wedding is to be at eleven o’clock to-morrow morning at Hill- 
ingsworth Church.” 

Olivia slowly lifted her hands to her head, and swept the 
loose hair away from her brow. All the mists that had ob¬ 
scured her brain melted slowly away, and showed her the past 
as it had really been in all its naked horror. Yes; step by step 
the cruel hand had urged her on from bad to worse; from bad 
to worse; until it had driven her here. 

It was for this that she had sold her soul to the powers of hell. 
It was for this that she had helped to torture that innocent girl 
whom a dying father had given into her pitiless hand. For this! 
for this! To find at last that all her iniquity had been wasted, 
and that Edward Arundel had chosen another bride—fairer, 
perhaps, than the first. The mad, unholy jealousy in her nature 
awoke from the obscurity of mental decay, a fierce ungovernable 
spirit. But another spirit arose in the next moment. Con¬ 
science, which so long had slumbered, awoke, and cried to her, 
in an awful voice; 

“ Sinner, whose sin has been wasted, repent! restore! It is not 
yet too late.” 

The stern precepts of her religion came back,to her. She had 
rebelled against those rigid laws, she had cast off those iron fet¬ 
ters, only to fall into a worse bandage; only to submit to a 
stronger tyranny. She had been a servant of the God of Sacri¬ 
fice, and had rebelled when an offering was demanded of her. 
She had cast off the yoke of her Master, and had yielded herself 
up the slave of sin. And now, when she discovered whither he? 


304 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


chains had dragged her, she was seized with a sudden panic, and 
wanted to go back to her old Master. 

She stood for some minutes with her open palms pressed upon 
her forehead, and her chest heaving as if a stormy sea had raged 
in her bosom. 

“ This marriage must not take place,” she cried, at last. 

“Of course it mustn’t,” answered Mr. Weston; “didn’t I say 
so just now? And if you don’t speak to Paul and prevent it, I 
will. I’d rather you spoke to him, though,” added the surgeon, 
thoughtfully; “ because you see, it would come better from you, 
wouldn’t it, now ?” 

Olivia Marchmont did not answer. Her hands had dropped 
from her head, and she was standing looking at the floor. 

“ There shall be no marriage,” she muttered, with a wild 
laugh. “There’s another heart to be broken—that’s all. Stand 
aside, man,” she cried; “ stand aside, and let me go to him ; let 
me go to him.” 

She pushed the terrified surgeon out of her pathway, un¬ 
locked the door, hurried along the passage and across the hall. 
She opened the door of the western drawing-room and went in. 

Mr. Weston stood in the corridor looking after her. He 
waited for a few minutes listening for any sound that might 
come from the western drawing-room. But the wide stone hall 
was between him and that apartment; and, however loudly the 
voices might have been uplifted, no breath of them could have 
reached the surgeon’s ear. He waited for about five minutes, 
and then crept into the lobby and let himself out into the quad¬ 
rangle. 

“ At any rate, nobody can say that I am a coward,” he thought 
complacently, as he went under a stone archway that led into 
the park. “ But what a whirlwind that woman is! O my gra¬ 
cious, what a perfect whirlwind she is!” 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

“GOING TO BE MARRIED.” 

Paul Marchmont was still rolling hither and thither about 
the room, admiring his pictures, and smiling to himself at the 
recollection of the easy manner in which he had obtained 
George Weston’s consent to the Australian arrangement. For 
in his sober momeuts the surgeon was ready to submit to any¬ 
thing his wife and brother-in-law imposed upon him. It was 
only under the influence of pineapple rum that his manhood as¬ 
serted itself. Paul was still contemplating his pictures when 
Olivia burst into the room, but Mrs. Marchmont and her invalid 
daughter had retired for the night, and the artist was alone— 
alone wdth his own thoughts, which were rather of a triumphal 
and agreeable character just now; for Edward’s marriage and 
Mr. Weston’s departure w ere equally pleasant to him. 

He was startled a little by Olivia’s abrupt entrance, for it was 
not her habit to intrude upon him or any member of that 
household; on the contrary, she had shown an obstina'te deter- 


j 



805 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

mination to shut herself up in her own room, and to avoid every 
living creature except her servant Barbara Simmons. 

Paul turned and confronted her very deliberately, and with 
the smile that was almost habitual to him upon his thin, pale 
lips. Her sudden appearance had blanched his face a little; but 
beyond this he betrayed no sign of agitation. 

“My dear Mrs. Marchmont, you quite startle me. It is so 
very unusual to see yon here, and at this hour especially.” 

It did not seem as if she bad beard his voice. She went 
sternly up to him, with her thin listless arms hanging at her 
side, and her haggard eyes fixed upon his face. 

“ Is this true ?” she asked. 

He stared a little in spite of himself; for be understood in a 
moment what she meant. Some one, it scarcely mattered who, 
had told her of the coming marriage. 

“Is what true, my dear Mrs. John?” he said, carelessly. 

“ Is this true that George Weston tells me?” she cried, laying 
her thin hand upon his shoulder. Her wasted fingers closed in¬ 
voluntarily upon the collar of his coat, her thin lips contracted 
into a ghastly smile, and a sudden fire kindled in her eyes. A 
strange sensation awoke in the tips of those tightening fingers, 
and thrilled through every vein of the woman’s body—such a 
horrible thrill as vibrates along the nerves of a monomaniac, 
when the sight of a dreadful terror in his victim’s face first 
arouses the murderous impulse in his breast. 

Paul’s face whitened as he felt the thin finger-points tighten¬ 
ing upon his neck. He was afraid of Olivia. 

“My dear Mrs. John, what is it you want of me?” he said, 
hastily. “ Pray do not be violent.” 

“ I am not violent.” 

She dropped her hand from his breast. It was true, she was 
not violent. Her voice was low; her hand fell loosely by her 
side. But Paul was frightened of her, nevertheless: for he saw 
that if she was not violent, she was something worse—she was 
dangerous. 

“ Did George Weston tell me the truth just now?” she said. 

Paul bit his nether lip savagely. George Weston had tricked 
him, then, after all, and had communicated with this woman. 
But what of that? She would scarcely be likely to trouble her¬ 
self about this business of Edward Arundel’s marriage. She 
must be past any such folly as that. She would not dare to in¬ 
terfere in the matter. She could not. 

“ Is it true ?” she said; “ is it? Is it true that Edward Arun¬ 
del is going to be married to-morrow?” 

She waited, looking with fixed, widely-opened eyes at Paul’s 
face. 

“ My dear Mrs. John, you take me so completely by surprise 
that I-” 

“ That you have not got a lying answer ready for me,” said 
Olivia, interrupting him. “You need not trouble yourself to 
invent one. I see that George Weston told me the truth. There 
was reality in his words. There is nothing but falsehood in 
yours,” 


306 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


Paul stood looking at her, but not listening to her. Let her 
abuse and upbraid him to her heart’s content; it gave him leis¬ 
ure to reflect, and plan his course of action; and perhaps these 
bitter words might exhaust the fire within her. and leave her 
malleable to his skillful hands once more. He had time to 
think this, and to settle his own line of conduct while Olivia 
was speaking to him. It was useless to deny the marriage. She 
had heard of it from George Weston, and she might hear of it 
from any one else whom, she chose to interrogate. It was use¬ 
less to try to stifle this fact. 

“Yes, Mrs. John,” he said, “it is quite true. Your cousin, 
Mr. Arundel, is going to marry Belinda Lawford; a very lucky 
tning for us, believe me, as it will put an end to all questioning 
and watching and suspicion, and place us beyond all danger.” 

Olivia looked at him with her bosom heaving, her breath 
growing shorter and louder, with every word he spoke. 

“ You mean to let this be, then ?” she said, when he had fin¬ 
ished speaking. 

“ To let what be?” 

“This marriage. You will let it take place?” 

“ Most certainly. Why should I prevent it?” 

“Why should you prevent it!” she cried, fiercely: and then, 
in an altered voice, in tones of anguish, that were iike a wail of 
despair, she exclaimed, “O my God! my God! what a dupe I 
have been; what a miserable tool in this man’s hands. O my 
offended God! why didst Thou so abandon me, when I turned 
away from Thee, and made Edward Arundel the idol of my 
wicked heart ?” 

Paul sank into the nearest chair, with a faint sigh of relief. 

“ She will wear herself out,” he thought, “ and then I shall be 
able to do what I like with her.” 

But Olivia turned to him again while he was thinking this. 

“Do you imagine that I will let this marriage take place ?” 
she asked. 

“ l do not think you will be so mad as to prevent it. That 
little mystery which you and I have arranged between us is not 
exactly child’s play, Mrs. John. We can neither of us afford to 
betray the other. Let Edward Arundel marry, and work for his 
wife, and be happy; nothing could be better for us than his 
marriage. Indeed," we have every reason to be thankful to 
Providence for the turn that affairs have taken,” Mr. Marchmont 
concluded, piously. 

“Indeed!” said Olivia; “and Edward Arundel is to have 
another bride. He is to be happy with another wife; and I am 
to hear of their happiness, to see him some day. perhaps, sitting 
by her side and smiling at her, as I have seen him smile at Mary 
Marchmont. He is to be happy, and I am to know of his happi 
ness. Another baby-faced girl is to glory in the knowledge of 
his love, and I am to be quiet—I am to be quiet. Is it for this 
that I have sold my soul to you, Paul Marchmont ? Is it for this 
I have shared your guilty secrets? Is it for this I have heard 
her feeble wailing sounding in my wretched feverish slumbers, 
as I have heard it every night since the day she left this house? 


307 


JOHN MARCHMONT 'S LEGACY. 

Do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember how 
it was you tempted me ? Do you remember how you played 
upon my misery, and traded on the tortures of my jealous 
heart? ‘He has despised your love,’you said: ‘ will you con¬ 
sent to see him happy with another woman ?' That was your 
argument, Paul Marchmont. You allied yourself with the devil 
that held possession of my breast, and together you were too 
strong for me. I was set apart to be damned, and you were the 
chosen instrument of my damnation. You bought my soul, 
Paul Marchmont. You shall not cheat me of the price for 
which I sold it. You shall hinder this marriage.” 

“ You are a mad woman, Mrs. John Marchmont, or you would 
net propose any such thing.” 

“Go,” she said, pointing to the door; “ go to Edward Arun¬ 
del, and do something, no matter what, to prevent this mar¬ 
riage.” 

“ I shall do nothing of the kind.” 

He had heard that a monomaniac was always to be subdued 
by indomitable resolution, and he looked at Olivia, thinking to 
tame her by his unfaltering glance. He might about as well 
have tried to look the raging sea into calmness. 

“Iam not a fool. Mrs. John Marchmont,” he said, “and I 
shall do nothing of the kind. 

He had risen, and stood by the lamp-lit table, trifling rather 
nervously with its elegant litter of delicately-bound books, 
jeweled-handled paper-knives, newly-cut periodicals, and 
pretty womanly toys collected by the women of the household. 

The faces of the two were nearly upon a level as they stood 
opposite to each other, with only the table between them. 

“Then I will prevent it!” Olivia cried, turning toward the 
door. 

Paul Marchmont saw the resolution stamped upon her face. 
She would do what she threatened He ran to the door and had 
his hand upon the lock before she could reach it. 

“ No, Mrs. John,” he said, standing at the door, with his back 
turned to Olivia, and his fingers busy with the bolts and key. 
In spite of himself, this woman had made him a little nervous, 
and it was as much as he could do to find the handle of the key. 
“No, no, my dear Mrs. John; you shall not leave this house, 
nor this room, in your present state of mind, if you choose to 
be violent and unmanageable, we will give you the full benefit 
of your violence, and we will give you a better sphere of action. 
A padded room will be more suitable to your present temper, 
my dear madam. If you favor us with this sort of conduct, we 
will find people more fitted to restrain you.” 

He said all this in a sneering tone, that had a trilling tremu¬ 
lousness in it, while lie locked the door, and assured himself that 
it was safely secured. Then he turned, prepared to fight the 
battle out somehow or other. 

At the very moment of his turning there was a sudden crash, 
a shiver of broken glass, and the cold night wind blew into the 
room. One of the long French windows was wide open v and 
Olivia Marchmont was gone. 


308 


JOHN MARCHMONT } 8 LEGACY. 


He was out upon the terrace in the next moment; but even 
then he was too late, for he could not see her right or left of 
him upon the long stone platform. There were three separate 
flights of steps, three different paths, widely diverging across the 
wide grassy flat before Marchmont Towers. She might have 
gone either way. There was the great porch, and all manner 
of stone abutments along the grim facade of the house. She 
might have concealed herself behind any one of them. The 
night was hopelessly dark. A pair of handsome bronze lamps, 
which Paul had placed before the principal doorway, only made 
two spots of light in the gloom. He ran along the terrace, look¬ 
ing into every nook and corner which might have served as a 
hiding-place; but he did not find Olivia. 

She had left the house with the avowed intention of doing 
something to prevent the marriage. What would she do? 
What course would this desperate woman take in her jealous 
rage ? Would she go straight to Edward Arundel and tell 
him- 

Yes; this was most likely; for how else could she hope to pre¬ 
vent the marriage ? 

Paul stood quite still upon the terrace for a few minutes, 
thinking. There was only one course for him. To try and find 
Olivia would be next to hopeless. There were half a dozen out¬ 
lets from the park. There were ever so many different path¬ 
ways through the woody labyrinth at the back of the Towers. 
This woman might have taken any one of them. To waste the 
night in searching for her would be worse than useless. 

There was only one thing to be done. He must counter-check 
this desperate creature’s movements. 

He went back to the drawing-room, shut the window, and 
then rang the bell. 

There were not many of the old servants who had waited upon 
John Marchmont at the Towers now. The man who answered 
the bell was a person whom Paul had brought down from 
London. 

Get the chestnut saddled for me, Peterson,” said Mr. March¬ 
mont. “ My poor cousin's widow has left the house, and I am 
going after her. She has given me very greatalarm to-night by 
her conduct. I tell you this in confidence; but you can say as 
much to Mrs. Simmons, who knows more about her mistress than 
I do. See that there’s no time lost in saddling the chestnut. I 
want to overtake this unhappy woman if I can. Go and give 
the order, and then bring me my hat.” 

The man went away to obey his master. Paul walked to the 
chimney-piece and looked at the clock. 

“ They’ll be gone to bed at the Grange,” he thought to him¬ 
self. “ Will she go there and knock them up, I wonder? Does 
she know that Edward’s there? I doubt that; and yet Weston 
may have told her. At any rate, I can be there before her. It 
would take her a long time to get there on foot. I think I did 
the right thing in saying what I said to Peterson. I must have 
the report of her madness spread everywhere. I must face it 
out. But how—but how? So long as she was quiet I could 


JOUR MARCHMONTS LEGACY, 


809 


manage everything. But with her against me, and George 
Weston—oh, the cur, the white-hearted villain, after all that I 
have done for him and Lavinia! But what can a man expect 
when he’s obliged to put his trust in a fool?” 

He went to the window, and stood there looking out until he 
saw the groom coming along the gravel roadway below the ter 
race, leading a horse by the bridle. Then he put on the hat that 
the servant had brought him, ran down the steps, and got into 
the saddle 

“ All right, Jeffreys,” he said; “ tell them not to expect me 
back till to-morrow morning. Let Mrs. Simmons sit up for her 
mistress. Mrs. John may return at any hour in the night.” 

He galloped away along the smooth carriage-drive. At the 
lodge he stopped to inquire if any one had been through that 
way. No, the woman said; she had opened the gates for no 
one. Paul had expected no other answer. There was a foot¬ 
path that led to a little wicket-gate opening on the high-road ; 
and of course Olivia had chosen that way, which was a good 
deal shorter than the carriage drive. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE TURNING OF THE TIDE. 

IT was past two o’clock in the morning of the day which had 
been appointed for Edward Arundel’s wedding, when Paul 
Marchmont drew rein before the white gate that divided Major 
Lawford’s garden from the high-road. There was no lodge, no 
pretense of grandeur here. An old-fashioned garden surrounded 
an old-fashioned red brick house. There was an apple-orchard 
upon one side of the low white gate, and a flower garden, with 
a lawn and fish-pond, upon the other. The carriage-drive 
wound sharply round to a shallow fight of steps, and a broad 
door with a narrow window upon each side of it. 

Paul got off his horse at the gate, and went in, leading the 
animal by the bridle. He was a cockney heart and soul, and 
had no sense of any enjoyments that were not of a cockney 
nature. So the horse he had selected for himself was anything 
but a fiery creature. He liked plenty of bone and very little 
blood in the steed he rode, and was contented to go at a com¬ 
fortable jog-trot, seven miles an hour pace, along the wretched 
country roads. 

There was a row of old-fashioned wooden posts, with iron 
chains swinging between them, upon both sides of the doorway. 
Paul fastened the horse’s bridle to one of these, and went up the 
steps. He rang the bell that went clanging and jangling through 
the house in the stillness of the summer night. All the way along 
the road he had looked right and left, expecting to pass Olivia; 
but he had seen no sign of her. This was nothing, however, 
for there were by-ways by which she might come from March 
mont Towers to Lawford Grange. 

“ I must be before her, at any rate,” Paul thought to himself, 
as he waited patiently for an answer to his summons. - 

The time seemed very long to him, of course; but at last he 


BIO 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


saw a light glimmering through the mansion windows, and 
heard a shuffling foot in the hall. Then the door was opened 
very cautiously, and a woman’s scared face peered out at Mr. 
March mont through the opening. 

“ What is it?” the woman asked, in a frightened voice. 

“ It is I, Mr. Marchmont, of Marchmont Towers. Your master 
knows me. Mr. Arundel is here, is he not ?” 

“ Yes, and Mrs. Arundel too; but they’re all abed.” 

“ Never mind that. I must see Major Lawford immediately.” 

“ But they’re all abed.” 

“Never mind that, my good woman; I tell you I must see 
him.” 

“ But won’t to-morrow mornin’ do? It’s near three o’clock, 
and to-morrow’s our eldest miss’ wedding-day; and they’re all 
abed.” 

“ I must see your master. For mercy’s sake, my good woman, 
do what I tell you. Go and call up Major Lawford—you can 
do it quietly—and tell him I must speak to him at once.” 

The woman, with the chain of the door still between her and 
Mr. Marchmont, took a timid survey of Paul’s face. She had 
heard of him often enough, but had never seen him before, and 
she was rather doubtful of his identity. She knew that thieves 
and robbers resorted to all sorts of tricks in the course of their 
evil vocation. Mightn’t this application for admittance in the 
dead of the night be only a part of some burglarious plot against 
the spoons and forks, and that hereditary silver urn with lions’ 
heads holding rings in their mouths for handles, the fame of 
which had no doubt circulated throughout all Lincolnshire ? 
Mr. Marchmont had neither a black mask nor a dark-lantern, 
and to Martha Philpot’s mind these were essential attributes of 
the legitimate burglar; but he might be burglariously disposed, 
nevertheless, and it would be well to be on the safe side. 

“I’ll go and tell ’em,” the discreet Martha said, civilly: “ but 
perhaps you won’t mind my leaving the chain oop. It ain’t like 
as if it was winter,” she added, apologetically. 

“ You may shut the door if you like,” answered Paul; “only 
be quick and wake your master. You can tell him I want to 
see him upon a matter of life and death.” 

Martha hurried away, and Paul stood upon the broad stone 
steps waiting for her return. Every moment was precious to 
him, for he wanted to be beforehand with Olivia. He had no 
thought except that she would come straight to the Grange to 
see Edward Arundel; unless, indeed, she was ignorant of his 
whereabouts. 

Presently the light appeared again in the narrow windows, 
and this time a man’s foot sounded upon the stone-flagged hall. 
This time, too, Martha let down the chain, and opened the door 
wide enough for Mr. Marchmont to enter. She had no fear of 
burglarious marauders now that the valiant major was at her 
elbow. 

“Mr. Marchmont,” exclaimed the old soldier, opening a door 
leading into a little study, “ you’ll-excuse me if I seem rather 
bewildered by your visit. When an old fellow like me is called 


JOHN MA nCTTMONT'S LEGACY, 


an 


up in the middle of the night he can’t be expected to have his 
wits about him just at first. Martha, bring us alight. Sit down, 
Mr. Marchmont. There’s a chair at your elbow there. And 
now may I ask the reason-” 

“ The reason I’ve disturbed you in this abrupt manner. The oc¬ 
casion that brings me here is a very painful one; but I believe 
that my coming may save you and yours from much annoy¬ 
ance.” 

“Save us from annoyance! Really, my dear sir, you-” 

“ I mystify you for the moment, no doubt,” Paul'interposed, *- 
blandly; “ but if you will have a little patience with me, Major 
Lawford, 1 think I can make everything very clear—only too 
painfully clear. You have heard of my relative, Mrs. John 
Marchmont—my cousin’s widow ?” 

“I have,” answered the major, gravely. 

The dark scandals that had been current about wretched 
Olivia Marchmont came into his mind with the mention of her 
name, and the memory of those miserable slanders overshad¬ 
owed his frank face. 

Paul waited while Martha brought in a smoky lamp, with the 
half-lighted wick sputtering and struggling in its oily socket. 
Then he went on, in a calm, dispassionate voice, which seemed 
the voice of a benevolent Christian, sublimely remote from 
other people’s sorrows, but tenderly pitiful of suffering human¬ 
ity, nevertheless. 

“You have heard of my unhappy cousin. You have no doubt 
heard that she is—mad ?” 

He dropped his voice into so low a whisper that he only 
seamed to shape this last word with his thin, flexible lips. 

“ I have heard some rumor to that effect,” the major an¬ 
swered; “ that is to say, I have heard that Mrs. John Marchmont 
has lately become eccentric in her habits.” 

“It has been my dismal task to watch the slow decay of a 
very powerful intellect,” continued Paul. “ When I first came 
to Marchmont Towers, about the time of my cousin Mary’s un¬ 
fortunate elopement with Mr. Arundel, that mental decay had 
already set in. Already the compass of Olivia Marchmont’s 
mind had become reduced to a monotone, and the one dominant 
thought was doing its ruinous work. It was my fate to find the 
clew to that sad decay; it was my fate very speedily to discoiter 
the nature of that all-absorbing thought which, little by little, 
had grown into monomania.” 

Major Lawford stared at his visitor’s face. He was a plain- 
spoken man, and could scarcely 6ee his way clearly through all 
this obscurity of fine words. 

“You mean to say you found out what bad driven your 
cousin’s widow mad ?” he asked, bluntly. 

“ You put the question very plainly, Major Lawford. Yes; I 
discovered the secret of my unhappy relative’s morbid state of 
mind. That secret lies in the fact, that for the last ten years 
Olivia Marchmont has cherished a hopeless affection for her 
cousin, Mr. Edward Arundel.” 


JOHN MARGHMONTHS LEGACY. 


m 

The major almost bounded off his chair in horrified sur 
prise. 

“Good gracious!” he exclaimed; “you surprise me, Mr. 
Marchmont, and—and—rather unpleasantly.” 

“ I should never have revealed this secret to you or to any 
other living creature, Major Lawford, had not circumstances 
compelled me to do so. As far as Mr. Arundel is concerned, I 
can set your mind quite at ease. He has chosen to insult me 
very grossly; but let that pass. I must do him the justice to 
state that I believe him to have been from first to last utterly 
ignorant of the state of his cousin’s mind.” 

“ I hope so, sir: egad, I hope so!” exclaimed the major, rather 
fiercely. “ If I thought that this young man had trifled with 
the lady’s affection; if I thought— 

“You need think nothing to the detriment of Mr. Arundel.” 
answered Paul, with placid politeness, “ except that he is hot¬ 
headed, obstinate and foolish. He is a young man of excellent 
principles, and has never fathomed the secret of his cousin’s 
conduct toward him. I am rather a close observer—something 
of a student of human nature—and I have watched this un¬ 
happy woman. She loves, and has loved, her cousin Edward 
Arundel; and hers is one of those concentrative natures in which 
great passion is near akin to a monomania. It was this hopeless 
unreturned affection that imbittered her character, and made 
her a harsh step-mother to my poor cousin Mary. For a long 
time this wretched woman has been very quiet; but her tran¬ 
quillity has been only a deceitful calm. To-night the storm 
broke. Olivia Marchmout heard of the marriage that is to take 
place to-morrow; and, for the first time, a state of melancholy 
mania developed into absolute violence. She came to me, and 
attacked me upon the subject of this intended marriage. She 
accused me of having plotted to give Edward Arundel another 
bride; and then, after exhausting herself by a torrent of pas¬ 
sionate invective against me, against her cousin Edward, your 
daughter—every one concerned in to-morrow’s event—this 
wretched woman rushed out of the house iu a jealous fury, 
declaring that she would do something—no matter what—to 
hinder the celebration of Edward Arundel’s second marriage.” 

“ Good heavens!” gasped the major. “ And you mean to 
say-” 

‘ ? I mean to say, that there is no. knowing what may be at¬ 
tempted by a mad woman, driven mad by a jealousy itself al¬ 
most as terrible as madness. Olivia Marchmont has sworn to 
hinder your daughter’s marriage. What has not been done by 
unhappy creatures in this woman’s state of mind ? Every day 
we read of such things in the newspapers—deeds of horror at 
which the blood grows cold in our veins; and we wonder 
that Heaven can permit such misery. It is not any frivo¬ 
lous motive that brings me here in the dead of the night, Major 
Lawford. I come to tell you that a desperate woman has sworn 
to hinder to-morrow’s marriage. Heaven knows what she 
may do in her jealous frenzy. She may attack your daughter.” 

The father’s face grew pale. His Linda, his darling, exposed 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY,\ 


818 


to the fury of a mad woman! He could conjure up the scene; 
the fair girl clinging to her lover’s breast, and desperate Olivia 
Marchmont swooping down upon her like an angry tigress. 

•‘For mercy’s sake, tell me what I am to do, Mr. March¬ 
mont!” cried the major. “ God bless you, sir; for bringing me 
this warning. But what am I to do? What do you advise? 
Shall we postpone the wedding ?” 

“ On no account. All you have to do is to keep this wretched 
woman at bay. Shut your doors upon her. Do not let her be 
admitted to this house upon any pretense whatever. Get the 
wedding over an hour earliei than has been intended, if it is 
possible for you to do so, and hurry the bride and bridegroom 
away upon the first stages of their wedding-tour. If you wish 
to escape all the wretchedness of a public scandal, avoid seeing 
this woman.” 

“I will, I will,” answered the bewildered major. “It’s a 
most awful situation. My poor Belinda! Her wedding-day! 
And a mad woman to attempt- Upon my word, Mr. March¬ 

mont, I don’t know how to thank you for the trouble you have 
taken.” 

“Don’t speak of that. This woman is my cousin’s widow; 
any shame of hers is disgrace to me. Avoid seeing her. If by 
any chance she does contrive to force herself upon you, turn a 
deaf ear to all she may say. She horrified me to night by her 
mad assertions. Be prepared for anything she may declare. 
She is possessed by all manner of delusions, remember, and may 
make the most ridiculous assertions. There is no limit to her 
hallucinations. She may offer to bring Edward Arundel’s dead 
wife from the grave, perhaps. But you will not. on any ac¬ 
count, allow her to obtain access to your daughter.” 

“No, no; on no account. My poor Belinda! I am very 
grateful to you, Mr. Marchmont, for this warning. You’ll stop 
here for the rest of the night? Martha’s beds are always aired. 
You’ll accept the shelter of our spare room until to-morrow 
morning!” 

“ You are very good, Major Lawford; but I must hurry away 
directly. Remember that I am quite ignorant as to where my 
unhappy relative may be wandering at this hour of the night. 
She may have returned to the Towers. Her jealous fury may 
have-exhausted itself; and in that case I have exaggerated the 
danger. But, at any rate, I thought it best to give you this 
warning.” 

“ Most decidedly, my dear sir; I thank you from the bottom 
of my heart. But you’ll take something—wine, tea, brandy- 
and-water—eh?” 

Paul had put on his hat and made his way into the ball by 
this time. There was no affectation in his eagerness to be away. 
He glanced uneasily toward the door every now and then, 
while the major was offering hospitable hinderance to his de¬ 
parture. He was very pale, with a haggard, ashen pallor that 
betrayed his anxiety, in spite of his bland calmness of manner. 

“You are very kind. No; I will get away at once. I have 
done my duty here; I must now try and do what I can for this 


814 


JOHN MARCHMONT S LEGACY. 


■wretched woman. Good-night. Remember; shut your doors 
upon her.” 

He unfastened the bridle of his horse, mounted, and rode 
away slowly, so long as there was any chance of the horse’s 
tread being heard at the Grange. But when he was a quarter 
of a mile away from Major Lawford’s house, he urged the horse 
into a gallop. He had no spurs, but he used his whip with a 
ruthless hand, and went off at a tearing pace along a narrow 
lane, where the ruts were deep. 

He rode for sixteen miles, and it was gray morning when he 
drew rein at a dilapidated five-barred gate leading into the 
great, tenantless yard of an uninhabited farm-house. The 
place had been unlet for some years, and the farm was in the 
charge of a hind in Mr. Marchmont’s service. The hind lived 
in a cottage at the other extremity of the farm, and Paul had 
erected new buildings, with engine-houses and complicated 
machinery for pumping the water off the low-lying lands. Thus 
it was that the old farm-house and the old farm-yard were suf¬ 
fered to fall into decay. The empty sties, the ruined barns and 
outhouses, the rotting straw, and pools of rank corruption, made 
this tenantless farm-yard the very abomination of desolation. 
Paul Marchmont opened the gate and went in. He picked his 
way very cautiously through the mud and filth, leading his 
horse by the bridle till he came to an outhouse, where he se¬ 
cured the animal. Then he picked his way across the yard, 
lifted the rusty latch of a narrow wooden door set in a plastered 
wall, and went into a dismal stone court where one lonely hen 
was molting in miserable solitude. 

Long, rank grass grew in the interstices of the flags. The 
lonely hen set up a roopy cackle, and fluttered into a corner at 
sight of Paul Marchmont. There were some rabbit-hutches, 
tenantless; a dove cote, empty; a dog-kennel, and a broken 
chain rusting slowly in a pool of water, but no dog. The court¬ 
yard was at the back of the house, looked down upon by a 
range of latticed windows, some with closed shutters, others 
wfith shutters swinging in the wind, as if they had been fain to 
beat themselves to death in very desolation of spirit, 

Mr. Marchmont opened a door and went into the house. 
There were empty cellars and pantries, dairies and sculleries, 
right and left of him. The rats and mice scuttled away at 
sound of the intruder’s footfall. The spiders ran upon the 
damp-stained walls, and the disturbed cobwebs floated slowly 
down from the cracked ceilings and tickled Mr. Marchraont’s 
face. 

Further on in the interior of the gloomy habitation Paul 
found a great stone-paved kitchen, at the darkest end of which 
there was a rusty grate, in which a minimum of flame strug¬ 
gled feebly with a maximum of smoke. An open overi-door re¬ 
vealed a dreary black cavern; and the very manner of therustv 
door, and loose, half-broken handle, was an advertisement of 
incapacity for any homely hospitable use. Pale, sickly fungi 
had sprung up in clusters at the corners ot the damp hearth 
stone. Spiders and rats, damp and cobwebs, every sign by 



JOHN HflRCHMONT'S LEGACY, 315 

which decay writes its name upon the dwelling man has de¬ 
serted, had set its separate mark upon this ruined place. 

Paul Marchmont looked round him with a contemptuous 
shudder. He called “Mrs. BrownI Mrs. Brown!” two or three 
times, each time waiting for an answer; but none came, and 
Mr. Marchmont passed on into another room. 

Here at least there was some poor pretense of comfort. The 
room was in the front of the house, and the low-latticed win¬ 
dow looked out upon a neglected garden, where some tall fox¬ 
gloves reared their gaudy heads above the weeds. Across the 
garden there was a stout brick wall, with pear-trees trained 
against it, and dragon’s mouth and wall-flower waving in the 
morning breeze. 

There was a bed in this room, empty; an easy-chair near the 
window; near that a little table, and a set of Indian chessmen. 
Upon the bed there were some garments scattered, as if but 
lately flung there; and upon the floor, near the fireplace, there 
were the fragments of a child’s first toys—a tiny trumpet, 
bought at some village fair, a baby’s rattle, and a broken horse. 

Paul Marchmont looked about hin; a little puzzled first, then 
with a vague dread in his haggard face. 

“ Mrs. Brown!” he cried, in a loud voice, hurrying across the 
room toward an inner door as he spoke. 

The inner door was opened before Paul could reach it, and a 
woman appeared; a tall, gaunt-looking woman, with a hard face 
and bare, brawny arms. 

“ Where, iu Heaven’s name, have you been hiding yourself, 
woman?” Paul cried, impatiently. “And where’s your pa¬ 
tient?” 

“ Gone, sir.” 

“ Gone where ?” 

“With her step-mamma, Mrs. Marchmont—not half an hour 
ago. As it was your wish I should stop behind to clear up, I’ve 
done so, sir, but I did think it would have been better for me 
to have gone with-” 

Paul clutched the woman by the arm, and dragged her toward 
him. 

“ Are you mad ?” he cried, with an oath. “ Are you mad or 
drunk ? Who gave you leave to let that woman go ? Who-” 

He couldn’t finish the sentence. His throat grew dry, and he 
gasped for breath, while all the blood in his body seemed to rush 
into his swollen forehead. 

“ You sent Mrs. Marchmont to fetch my patient away, sir,” 
exclaimed the woman, looking frightened. “You did, didn’t 
you? She said so!” 

“ She is a liar; and you are a fool or a cheat. She paid you, 
I dare say! Can’t you speak, woman? Has the person I left in 
your care, whom you were paid, and paid well, to take care of— 
have you let her go? Answer me that.” 

“I have, sir,” the woman faltered—she was big and brawny, 
hut there was that in Paul Marchmont’s face that frightened 
ner, notwithstanding—“ seeing as it was your orders.” 

“ That will do,” cried Paul Marchmont, holding up his hand, 


816 


JOHN MARCRMONT'S LEGACY. 


and looking at the woman with a ghastly smile; “ that will do. 
You have ruined me; do you hear? You have undone a work 
that has cost me—- Oh, my God! why do I waste my breath in 
talking to such a creature as this? All my plots, my difficulties, 
my struggles and victories, my long sleepless nights, my bad 
dreams—has it all come to this? Ruin, unutterable ruin, brought 
upon me by a mad woman!” 

He sat down in the chair by the window, and leaned upon the 
table, scattering the Indian chessmen with his elbow. He did 
not weep. That relief—terrible relief though it is for a man’s 
breast—was denied him. He sat there with his face covered, 
moaning aloud. That helpless moan was scarcely like the com¬ 
plaint of a man; it was rather like the hopeless, dreary utter¬ 
ance of a brute’s anguish; it sounded like the miserable howling 
of a beaten cur. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

BELINDA’S WEDDING-DAY. 

The sun shone upon Belinda Lawford’s wedding-day. The 
birds were singing in the garden under her window as she 
opened the lattice and looked out. The word lattice is not a 
poetical license in this case; for Miss Lawford’s chamber was a 
roomy, old-fashioned apartment at the back of the house, with 
deep window-seats and diamond-paned casements. 

The sun shone, and the roses bloomed in all their summer 
glory. “ ’Tvvas in the time of roses,” as gentle-minded Thomas 
Hood so sweetly sang: surely the time of all others for a bridal 
morning. The girl looked out into the sunshine, with her loose 
auburn hair falling about her shoulders, and lingered a little, 
looking at the familiar garden, with a half-pensive smile. 

“ Oh, how often, how often,” she said. **I have walked up 
and down by those laburnums, Letty!” There were two pretty 
white-curtained bedsteads in the old-fashioned room, and Miss 
Arundel had shared her friend’s apartment for the last week. 
*• How often mamma and I have sat under the dear old cedar, 
making our poor children's frocks! People say monotonous 
lives are not happy; mine has been the same thing over and over 
again; and yet how happy J have been! And to think that we” 
—she paused a moment, and the rosy color in her cheek deep¬ 
ened by just one shade; it was so sweet to use that simple mono¬ 
syllable “ we” when Edward Arundel was the other half of the 
pronoun—“ to thiDk that we shall be in Paris to-morrow!” 

“Driving in the Bois,” exclaimed Miss Arundel, “dining at 
the Maison D :>ree, or the Cafe de Paris. Don’t dine at Meurice’s, 
Linda; it’s dreadfully slow dining at one’s hotel. And you’ll be 
a young married woman, and can do anything, you know. If I 
were a vouug married woman I’d ask my husband to take me 
to the Mabille, just for half an hour, with an old bonnet and a 
thick veil, I knew a girl whose first cousin married a cornet in 
the Guards, and they went to the Mabille one night. Come, Be¬ 
linda. if you mean to have your back hair done at all, you’d bet¬ 
ter sit down at once and let me commence operations.” 



JOHN WARCHMONT’S LEGACY. Sit 

Miss Arundel had stipulated that, upon this particular morn¬ 
ing, she was to dress her friend’s hair; and she turned up the 
frilled sleeves of her white dressing-gown, and set to work in 
the orthodox manner, spreading a net-work of shining auburn 
tresses about Miss Lawford’s shoulders, prior to the weaving of 
elaborate plaits that were to make a crown for the fair young 
bride. Letitia’s tongue went as fast as her fingers; but Belinda 
was very silent. 

She was thinking of the bounteous Providence that had given 
her the man she loved for her husband. She had been on her 
knees in the early morning long before Letitia’s awakening, 
breathing out innocent thanksgivings for the happiness that 
overflowed her fresh young heart. A woman had need to be 
country bred, and to have been reared in the narrow circle of a 
happy home, to feel as Belinda Lawford felt. Such love as 
hers is only given to bright and innocent spirits, untarnished 
even by the knowledge of sin. 

Down-stairs Edward Arundel was making a wretched pre¬ 
tense of breakfasting tete-a-tete with his future father-in-law. 

The major had held his peace as to the unlooked-for visitant 
of the past night. He had given particular orders that 
no stranger, should be admitted to the house, and that 
was all. But, being of a naturally frank, not to say loqua¬ 
cious disposition, the weight of this secret was a very terrible 
burden to the honest half-pay soldier. He ate his dry toast un¬ 
easily, looking at the door every now and then, in the perpetual 
expectation of beholding that barrier burst open by mad Olivia 
Marchmont. 

The breakfast was not a very cheerful meal, therefore. I 
don't suppose any ante-nuptial breakfast is very jovial. There 
was the state banquet —the wedding-breakfast—to be eaten by 
and by; and Mrs. Lawford, attended by all the females of the 
establishment, was engaged in putting the last touches to the 
groups of fruit aud confectionery, the pyramid of flowers, and 
that crowning glory, the wedding-cake. 

Remember, the still Hock and Madeira are to go round first, 
and then the sparkling; and tell Gogran to be particular about 
the corks, Martha,” Mrs. Lawford said to her confidential maid, 
as she gave a nervous last look at the table. “ I was at a break¬ 
fast once where a champagne cork hit the bridegroom on the 
bridge of his nose at the very moment he rose to return thanks; 
and being a nervous man, poor fellow!—in point of fact lie was 
a curate, and the bride was the rector’s daughter, with two hun¬ 
dred a year of her own—it quite overcame him. and he didn’t 
get over it all through the breakfast. And now I must run and 
put on my bonnet.” 

There was nothing but putting on bonnets, and pinning lace 
shawls, and wild outcries for hair-pins, and interchanging of 
little femiuine services, upon the bedroom floor for the next 
half-hour. 

Major Lawford walked up aud down the hall, putting on his 
white gloves, which were too large for him—elderly men’s white 
gloves always are too large for them—and watching the door of 


818 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


the citadel. Olivia must pass over a father’s body, the old sol¬ 
dier thought, before she should annoy Belinda on her bridal 
morning. 

By and by the carriages came round to the door. The 
girl bridemaids came crowding down the stairs, hustling each 
other’s crisped garments, and disputing a little in a sisterly 
fashion; then Letitia Arundel, with nine rustling flounces of' 
white silk ebbing and flowing and surging about her, and 
with a pleased simper upon her face; and then followed Mrs. 
Arundel, stately in silver-gray moire , and Mrs. Lawford, in vio¬ 
let silk—until the hall was a show of bonnets and bouquets and 
muslin. 

And last of all, Belinda Lawford, robed in cloud-like garments 
of spotless lace, with bridal flowers trembling round her hair, 
came slowly down the broad old-fashioned staircase, to see her 
lover loitering in the hall below. 

He looked very grave: but he greeted his bride with a tender 
smile. He loved her, but he could not forget. Even upon this 
his wedding-day the haunting shadow of the past was with him; 
not to be shaken off. 

He did not wait till Belinda reached the bottom of the stair¬ 
case. There was a sort of ceremonial law to be observed, and 
he was not to speak to Miss Lawford upon this special morning 
until he met her in the vestry at Hillingsworth Church, so Leti¬ 
tia and Mrs. Arundel hustled the young man into one of the car¬ 
riages, while Major Lawford ran to receive his daughter at the 
foot of the stairs. 

The Arundel carriage drove off about five minutes before the 
vehicle that was to convey Major Lawford, Belinda, and as 
many of the girl bridemaids as could be squeezed into it without 
detriment to lace and muslin. The rest went with Mrs. Law¬ 
ford in the third and last carriage. Hillingsworth Church was 
about three-quarters of a mile from the Grange. It was a 
pretty, irregular old place, lying in a little nook under the 
shadow of a great yew-tree. Behind the square Norman tower 
there was a row of poplars, black against the blue summer skv: 
and between the low gate of the churchyard and the gray, moss 
grown porch there was an avenue of good old elms. The rooks 
were calling to each other in the topmost branches of the trees 
as Major Lawford’s carriage drew up at the churchyard gate. 

Belinda was a great favorite among the poor of Hillingsworth 
parish, and the place had put on a gala-day aspect in honor of 
her wedding. Garlands of honeysuckle and wild clematis were 
twined about the stout oaken gate-posts. The school-children 
were gathered in clusters in the churchyard, with their pina¬ 
fores full of fresh flowers from shadowy lanes and from prim 
cottage-gardens—bright, homely blossoms, with the morning 
dew still upon them, 

Th® rector and his curate were standing in the porch waiting 
for the coming of the bride; and there were groups of well- 
dressed people dotted about here and there in the drowsy shel¬ 
tered pews near the altar. There were humbler spectators 
clustered under the low ceiling of the gallery—tradesmen’s 


JOHN MARCHMON'l 'S LEGACY . 8i9 

wives and daughters, radiant with new ribbons, and whisper- 
ing to one another in delighted anticipation of the show*. 

Everybody round about the Grange loved pretty, genial Be- 
linda Lawford, and there was universal rejoicing because of her 
happiness. 

The wedding party came out of the vestry presently, in ap¬ 
pointed order; the bride with her head drooping, and her face 
hidden by her veil; the bridemaids’ garments making a fluttering 
noise as they came up the aisle, like the sound of a summer 
breeze faintly stirring a field of corn. 

Then the grave voice of the rector began the service with the 
brief preliminary exordium; and then, in a tone that .grew more 
solemn with the increasing solemnity of the words, he went bn 
to that awful charge which is addressed especially to the bride¬ 
groom and the bride: 

“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the 
dreadful Day of Judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall 
be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment why ye 
may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now 
confess it. For be ye well assured-” 

The rector read no further; for a woman’s voice from out 
the dusky shadows at the further end of the church cried 
‘‘Stop!” 

There w-as a sudden silence; people stared at each other with 
pale, scared faces, and then turned in the direction whence the 
voice had come. The bride lifted her head for the first time 
since leaving the vestry, and looked round about her, ashy pale 
and trembling. 

“ Oh, Edward, Edward!” she cried, “ what is it ?” 

The rector waited, with his hand still upon the open book. 
He waited, looking toward the other end of the chancel. He 
had no need to wait long: a woman, with a black veil thrown 
back from a white, haggard face, and with dusty garments 
dragging upon the church-floor, came slowly up the aisle. 

Her two hands were clasped upon her breast, and her breath 
came in gasps, as if she had been running. 

“Olivia,” cried Edward Arundel, “what, in Heaven’s 
name-” 

But Major Lawford stepped forward, and spoke to the rector. 

“ Pray let her be got out of the way,” he said, in a low voice. 
“I was warned of this. I was quite prepared for some such 
disturbance.” He sank his voice to a whisper. “She is mad!” 
he said, close in the rector’s ear. 

The whisper was like whispering in general—more distinctly 
audible than the rest of the speech. Olivia Marchmont heard 

“ Mad until to-day,” she cried; “ but not mad to-day. Oh, 
Edward Arundel! a hideous wrong has been done by me and 
through me. Your wife—your wife-” 

“ My wife! what of her? She-” 

“ She is alive!” gasped Olivia; “ an hour’s walk from here. I 
came on foot. I was tired, and I came slowly. I thought that 


320 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


I should be in time to stop you before you got to the church: 
but I am very weak. I ran the last part of the way-” 

She dropped her hands upon the altar-rails, and seemed as if 
she would have fallen. The rector put his arm about her to 
support her, and she went on: 

“ I thought I should have spared her this,” she said, pointing 
to Belinda; “ but I can’t help it. She must bear her misery as 
well as others. It can’t be worse for her than it has been for 
others. She must bear-” 

“My wife!” said Edward Arundel; “Mary, my poor sorrow¬ 
ful darling—alive?” 

Belinda turned away, and buried her face upon her mother's 
shoulder. She could have borne anything better than this. 

His heart—that supremo treasure, for which she had rendered 
up thanks to her God—had never been hers, after all. A word, 
a breath, and she was forgotten; his thoughts went back to that 
other one. There was unutterable joy, there -was unspeakable 
tenderness in his tone, as he spoke of Mary Marchmont, though 
she stood by his side in all her foolish bridal finery with her 
heart newly broken. 

“ Oh, mother,” she cried, “ take me away! take me away be¬ 
fore I die!” 

Olivia flung herself upon her knees by the altar-rails, where 
the poor young bride was to have knelt by her lover’s side; this 
wretched sinner cast herself down, sunk far below all common 
thoughts in the black depth of her despair. 

“ Oh, my sin, my sin!” she cried, with clasped hands lifted up 
above her head. “ Will God ever forgive my sin ? will God ever 
have pity upon me ? Can He pity, can He forgive such guilt as 
mine ? Even this work of to-day is no atonement to be reck¬ 
oned against my wickedness. I was jealous of her; I was jeal¬ 
ous! Earthly passion was stillj predominant in this miserable 
breast.” 

She rose suddenly, as if this outburst had never been, and laid 
her hand upon Edward Aruudel’s arm. 

“ Come!” she said; “ come!” 

“ To her—to Mary—my wife?” 

They had taken Belinda away by this time, but Major Law- 
ford stood looking on. He tried to draw Edward aside; but 
Olivia’s hand upon the young man’s arm held him like a vise. 

“ She is mad,” whispered the major, “ Mr. Marchmont came 
to me last night, and warned me of all this. He told me to be 
prepared for anything; she had all sorts of delusions. Get her 
away, if you can, while I go and explain matters to Belinda. 
Edward, if you have a spark of manly feeling, get this woman 
away.” 

But Olivia held the bridegroom’s arm with a tightening grasp. 

“ Come!” she said; “ come! Are you turned to stone, Edward 
Arundel ? Is your love worth no more than this ? I tell you, 
your wife, Mary Marchmont, is alive. Let those who doubt me 
come and see for themselves.” 

The eager spectators, standing up in the pews or crowding in 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY ,. 3A 

the nairow aisle, where only too ready to respond to this invita¬ 
tion. 

Olivia led her cousin out into the churchyard; she led him to 
the gate where the carriages were waiting. The crowd flocked 
after them; and the people began to cheer as they came out. 
That cheer was the signal for which the school-children had 
waited; and they set to work scattering flowers upon the narrow 
pathway, before they looked up to see who was coming to tread 
upon the rosebuds and jasmine, the woodbine and seringa. But 
they drew back, scared and wondering, as Olivia came along 
the pathway, sweeping those tender blosoms after her with her 
trailing black garments, and leading the pale bridegroom by his 
arm. 

She led him to the door of the carriage beside which Major 
Lawford’s gray-haired groom was waiting, with a big white 
satin favor pinned upon his breast, and a bunch of roses in his 
button-hole. There were favors in the horses’ ears, and favors 
upon the breasts of the Hillingsworth trades-people who sup¬ 
plied bread and butcher’s meat and groceries to the family at the 
Grange. The bell-ringers up in the church-tower saw the crowd 
flock out of the porch, and thought the marriage ceremony was 
over. The jangling bells pealed out upon the hot summer ah* as 
Edward stood by the churchyard gate, with Olivia Marchmont 
by his side. 

“ Lend me your carriage,” he said, to Major Lawford, “and 
come with me. I must see the end of this. It may be all a de¬ 
lusion; but I must see the end of it. If there is any truth in 
instinct, I believe I shall see my wife—alive,” 

He got into the carriage without further ceremony, and Olivia 
and Major Law ford followed him. 

“Where is my wife?” the young man asked, letting dowm 
the*front window as he spoke. 

“ At Kemberling, at Hester Jobson’s.” 

“ Drive to Kemberling,” Edward said, to the coachman—“ to 
Kemberling High Street, as fast as you can go.” 

The man drove away from the churchyard gate. The humbler 
spectators, who were restrained by no niceties of social eti¬ 
quette, hurried after the vehicle, raising vrhite clouds of dust 
upon the high-road with their eager feet. The higher classes 
lingered about the churchyard, talking to each other and won¬ 
dering. 

Very few people stopped to think of Belinda Lawford. 
“ Let the stricken deer go weep.” A stricken deer is a very un¬ 
interesting object when there are hounds in full chase hard by, 
and another deer to be hunted. 

Since when has my wife been at Kemberling?” Edward Ar¬ 
undel asked Olivia, as the carriage drove along the high-road 
between the two village?. 

“ Since daybreak this morning.” 

“ Where was she before then ?" 

“ At Stony-Stringford Farm.” 

“ And before then ?” 

" In the pavilion over the boat house at Marchmont,” 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S legacy . 


m 


“ My God! And—” TT , . , . 

The young man did not finish his sentence. He put his head 
out of the window looking toward Kemberling, and straining 
his eyes to catch the earliest sight of the straggling village 
street. 

“Faster!” he cried every now and then to the coachman; 
“ faster!” 

In littie more than half an hour from the time at which it had 
left the churchyard gate the carriage stopped before the little 
carpenter’s-shop. Mr. Jobson’s doorway was adorned by a 
painted representation of two very doleful-looking mutes stand¬ 
ing at a door; for Hester’s husband combined the more aris¬ 
tocratic avocation of undertaker with the homely trade of car¬ 
penter and joiner. 

Olivia Marchmont got out of the carriage before either of the 
two men could alight to assist her. Power was the supreme at¬ 
tribute of this woman’s mind. Her purpose never faltered; 
from the moment she left Marchmont Towers until now she had 
known neither rest of body nor wavering of intention. 

“ Come,” she said to Edward Arundel, looking back as she 
stood upon the threshold of Mr. Jobson’s door; “ and you too,” 
she added, turning to Major Lawford—“ follow us, and see 
whether I am mad.” 

She passed through the shop, and into that prim, smart parlor 
in which Edward Arundel had lamented his lost wife. 

The latticed windows were wide open, and the warm sum¬ 
mer sunshine filled the room. 

A girl, with loose tresses of hazel-brown hair falling about her 
face, was sitting on the floor, looking down at a beautiful fair¬ 
haired nursling of a twelvemonth old. 

The girl was John Marchmont’s daughter; the child was Ed¬ 
ward Arundel’s son. It was his childish cry that the young 
man had heard upon that October night in the pavilion by the 
water. 


“ Mary Arundel,” said Olivia, in a hard voice, “ I give you 
back your husband!” 

The young mother got up from the ground and fell into her 
husband’s arms. Edward carried her to a sofa and laid her 
down, white and senseless, and then knelt down beside her, cry¬ 
ing over her, and sobbing out inasticulate thanksgiving to the 
God who bad given his lost wife back to him. 

“Poor, sweet lamb!” murmured Hester Jobson; “she’s as 
weak as a baby; and she’s gone through so much already this 
morning.” 

It was some time before Edward Arundel raised his head from 
the pillow upon which his wife’s pale face lay half-hidden 
amidst the tangled hair. But when he did look up, he turned 
to Major Lawford and stretched out his hand. 

“ Have pity upon me,” he said. “ 1 have been the dupe of a 
villain. Tell your poor child how much I esteem her, how much 
I regret that—that—we should have loved each other as we 
have. The instinct of my heart would have kept me true to 
the past; but it was impossible to know your daughter and not 


JOHN MARCH MO NT'S LEGACY. 


O A 
O s o 

love her. The villain who has brought this sorrow upon us 
shall pay dearly for his infamy. Go back to your daughter; tell 
her everything. Tell her what you have seen here. I know 
her heart, and I know that she will open her arms to this poor 
ill-used child.” 

The major went away. Hester Jobson bustled about, bring¬ 
ing restoratives and pillows, stopping every now and then in an 
outburst of affection by the slippery horse-hair couch on which 
Mary lay. 

Mrs. jobson had prepared her best bedroom for her beloved 
visitor, and Edward carried his young wife up to the clean, airy 
chamber. He went back to the parlor to fetch the child. He 
carried the fair-haired little one up-stairs in his own arms; but 
I regret to say that the infant showed an inclination to whim¬ 
per in his newly-found father’s embrace. It is.only in the Brit¬ 
ish drama that newly-discovered fathers are greeted with an 
outburst of ready-made affection. Edward Arundel went back 
to the sitting-room presently, and sat down, waiting till Hester 
should bring him fresh tidings of his wife. Olivia Marchmont 
stood by the window, with her eyes fixed upon Edward. 

“Why don't you speak to me?” she said, presently. “Can 
you find no words that are vile enough to express your hatred 
of me? Is that why you are silent?” 

“No, Olivia,” answered the young man, calmly. “I am 
silent because I have nothing to say to you. Why you have 
acted as you have acted—why you have chosen to be the tool of 
a black-hearted villain—is an unfathomable mystery to me. I 
thank God that your conscience was aroused this day, and that 
you have at least hindered the misery of an innocent girl. 
But why you have kept my wife hidden from me—why you 
have been the accomplice of Paul Marchmont’s crime—is more 
than I can even attempt to guess.” 

“Not yet?” said Olivia, looking at him with a strange smile. 
“ Even yet I am a mystery to you ?” 

“You are, indeed,Olivia.” 

She turned away from him with a laugh. 

“Then I had better remain so till the end,” she said, looking- 
out into the garden. But after a moment’s silence she turned 
her head once more toward the young man. “ I will speak,” 
she said, “I will speak. Edward Arundel. 1 hope and believe 
that I have not long to live, and that all my shame and misery, 
mv obstinate wickedness, my guilty passion, will come to an 
end, like a long feverish dream. O God, have mercy on my 
waking, and make it brighter than this dreadful sleep! I loved 
you Edward Arundel. You don’t know what that word ‘love’ 
means, do you? You think you love that childish girl yonder, 
don’t you? but I can tell you that you don’t know what love is. 
/know what it is. I have loved. For ten years—for ten long, 
dreary, desolate, miserable years, fifty-two weeks in every year, 
fifty-two Sundays, with long idle hours between the two church 
services—I have loved you, Edward. Shall I tell you what it is 
to love? It is to suffer, to hate. Yes. to bate even the object of 
your love, when that love is hopeless; to hate him for the very 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


attributes that have made you love him; to grudge the gifts and 
graces that have made him dear. It is to hate every creature 
upon whom his eyes look with greater tenderness than they look 
on you; to watch one face until its familiar lines become a per¬ 
petual torment to you, and you cannot sleep because of its eter¬ 
nal presence staring at you in all your dreams. Love! How 
many people upon this great earth know the real meaning of 
that hideous word. I have learned it until mv soul loathes the 
lesson. They will tell you that I am mad, fid ward, and they 
will tell you something near the truth; but not quite the truth. 
My madness has been my love. From long ago, Edward, when 
you were little more than a boy—you remember, don’t you, the 
long days at the Rectory —I remember every word you ever 
spoke to me, every sentiment you ever expressed, every look of 
your changing face—you were the first bright thing that came 
across my barren life; and I loved you. I married John March- 
mont—why, do you think ?—because I wanted to make a barrier 
between you and me. I wanted to make my love for you im¬ 
possible by making it a sin. I did not think it was in my nature 
to sin. But since then—oh, I hope I have been mad since then; 
I hope that God may forgive my sins because I have been mad!” 

Her thoughts wandered away to that awful question which 
had been so lately revived in her mind—Could she be forgiven? 
Was it within the compass of Heavenly mercy to forgive such 
a sin as hers ? 


CHAPTER XL. 

MARY’S STORY. 

One of the minor effects of any great shock, any revolution, 
natural or political, social or domestic, is a singular uncon¬ 
sciousness or an exaggerated estimate of the passage of time. 
Sometimes we fancy that the common functions of the universe 
have come to a dead stop during the tempest which has shaken 
our being to its remotest depths. Sometimes, on the other 
hand, it seems to us that, because we have endured an age of 
suffering, or half a lifetime of bewildered joy, the terrestrial 
globe has spun round in time to the quickened throbbing of our 
passionate hearts, and that all the clocks upon earth have been 
standing still. 

When the sun sank upon the summer’s day that was to have 
been the day of Belinda’s bridal, Edward Arundel thought that 
it was still early in the morning. He wondered at the rosy 
light all over the western sky, and that great ball of molten 
gold dropping down below the horizon. He was fain to look at 
his watch, in order to convince himself that the low light was 
really the familiar sun, and not some unnatural appearance in 
the heavens. 

And yet, although he wondered at the closing of the day. 
with a strange inconsistency his miud could scarcely grapple 
with the idea that only last night he had sat by Belinda Law 
ford’s side, her betrothed husband, and had pondered, Heaven 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


325 


only knows with what sorrowful regret, upon the unknown 
grave in which his dead wife lay. 

“ I only knew it this morning,” he thought. “ I only knew 
this morning that my young wife still lives, and that I have a 
son.” 

He was sitting by the open window in Hester Jobson’s best 
bedroom. He was"sitting in an old-fashioned easy-chair, placed 
between the head of the bed and the open window—a pure cot¬ 
tage window, with diamond panes of thin greenish glass, and a 
broad painted ledge, with a great jug of homely garden-flowers 
standing on it. The young man was sitting by the side of the 
bed upon which his newly-found wife and son lay asleep; the 
child’s head nestled on his mother’s breast, one flushed cheek 
peeping out of a tangled confusion of hazel-brown and babyish 
flaxen hair. 

The white dimity curtains overshadowed the loving sleepers. 
The pretty fluffy knotted fringe—neat Hester’s handiwork— 
made fantastical tracery upon the sunlit counterpane. Mary 
slept with one arm folded round her child, and with her face 
turned to her husband. She bad fallen asleep, with her hand 
clasped in his, after a succession of fainting fits that had left 
her terribly prostrated. 

Edward Arundel watched that tender picture with a smile of 
ineffable affection. 

“ I can understand now why Roman Catholics worship the 
Virgin Mary,” he thought. “ I can comprehend the inspiration 
that guided Raphael’s hand when he painted the Madonna de 
la Chaise. In all the world there is no picture so beautiful. 
From all the universe he could have chosen no subject more 
sublime. Oh, my darling wife, given back to me out of the 
grave, restored to me, and not alone restored! My little son! 
my baby son! whose feeble voice I heard that dark October 
night. To think that I was so wretched a dupe! to think that 
my dull ears could hear that sound, and no instinct rise up in 
my heart to reveal the presence of my child. I was so near 
them, not once, but several times—so near, and I never knew— 
I never guessed!” 

He clinched his fists involuntarily at the remembrance of 
those purposeless visits to the lonely boat-house. His young 
wife was restored to him. But nothing could wipe away the 
long interval of agony in which he and she had been the dupe 
of a villainous trickster and a jealous woman. Nothing could 
give back the first year of that baby’s life — that year which 
should have been one long holiday of love and rejoicing. Upon 
what a dreary world those innocent eyes had opened, when they 
should have looked only upon sunshine and flowers, and the ten¬ 
der light of a loving father’s smile! , , , . 

“ Oh, mv darling, my darling!” the young husband thought, 
as he looked at his wife’s wan face, upon which the evidence of 
of all that past agony was only too painfully visible—“ how bit¬ 
terly we two have suffered! But how much more terrible must 
have been your suffering than mine, my poor gentle darling, 
my broken lily!” 


326 JOHN MARCH MONT’S LEGACY. 

In his rapture at finding the wife he had mourned as dead, 
the young man had for a time almost forgotten the villainous 
plotter who had kept her hidden from him. But now, as he sat 
quietly by the bed upon which Mary and her baby lay, he bad 
leisure to think of Paul Marchmont. 

What has he to do with that man ? What vengeance could he 
wreak upon the bead of that wretch who, for nearly two years, 
had condemned an innocent girl to cruel suffering and shame? 
To shame; for Edward knew that one of the most bitter tort¬ 
ures which Paul Marchmont had inflicted upon his cousin had 
been his pretended disbelief in her marriage. 

“What can Ido to him?” the young man asked himself. 
“ What can I do to him? There is no personal chastisement 
worse than that which he has endured already at my hands. 
The scoundrel! the heartless villain! the false, cold-blooded cur! 
What can I do to him ? I can only repeat, that shameful degra¬ 
dation, and I will repeat it. This time he shall howl under the 
lash like some beaten hound. This time I will drag him through 
the village street, and let every idle gossip in Kemberling see 
how a scoundrel writhes under an honest man’s whip. I 
will—” 

Edward Arundel’s wife woke while he was thinking what 
chastisement he should inflict upon her deadly foe: and the baby 
opened his round innocent blue eyes in the next moment, and 
sat up staring at his new parent. 

Mr. Arundel took the child in his arms, and held him very 
tenderly, though perhaps rather awkwardly. The baby’s round 
eyes opened wider at sight of the golden absurdities dangling at 
his father’s watch chain, and the little pudgy hands began to 
play with the big man's lockets and seals. 

“He comes to me, you see, Mary!” Edward said, with naive 
wonder. 

And then he turned the baby’s face toward him, and tenderly 
contemplated the bright, surprised blue eyes, the tiny dimples, 
the soft molded chin. I don’t fknow whether fatherly vanity 
prompted the fancy, but Edward Arundel certainly did fancy 
that he saw some faint reflection of his own features in that 
pink and white baby face; a shadowy resemblance like a tremu¬ 
lous image looking up out of a river. But while Edward was 
half-thinking this, half-wondering whether there could be any 
likeness to him in that infant countenance, Mary settled the 
question with womanly decision. 

“ Isn’t he like you, Edward ?” she whispered. “ It was only 
for his sake that I bore my life all through that miserable time; 
and I don t think I could have lived even for him if be hadn’t 
been so like you. I used to look at his face sometimes for hours 
and hours together, crying over him, and thinking of you. I 
don’t think I ever cried except when he was in my armsl Then 
something seemed to soften my heart, and the tears came to my 
eyes. I was very , very, very ill for a long time before my babv 
was bom; and I didn’t know how the time went, or where 1 
was. I used to fancy sometimes I was back on Oakley Street, 
and that papa was alive again, and that we were quite happy 


JOHN MARCH MONTS LEGACY . 


327 


together, except for some heavy hammer that was always beat¬ 
ing, beating, beating upon both our heads, and the dreadful 
sound of the river rushing down the street under our windows. 
I heard Mr. Weston tell his wife that it was a miracle I lived 
through that time.” 

Hester Jobson came in presently with a tea-tray that made 
itself heard by a jingling of teaspoons and rattling of cups and 
saucers all the way up the narrow staircase. 

The friendly carpenter’s wife had produced her best china and 
her silver tea pot—an heirloom inherited from a wealthy 
maiden aunt of her husband’s. She had been busy all the after¬ 
noon, preparing that elegant little collation of cake and fruit 
which accompanied the tea-tray; and she spread the lavender- 
scented table-cloth, and arranged the cups and saucers, the 
plates and dishes, with mingled pride and delight. 

But she had to endure a terrible disappointment by and by; 
for neither of her guests was in a condition to do justice to her 
hospitality. Mary got up and sat in the roomy easy-chair, 
propped up with pillows. Her pensive eyes kept a loving watch 
upon the face of her husband, turned toward her own, and 
slightly crimsoned by that rosy flush fading out in the western 
sky. She sat up and sipped a cup of tea; and in that lovely 
summer twilight, with the scent of the flowers blowing in 
through the open window, and a stupid moth doing his best to 
beat out his brains against one of the diamond panes in the 
lattice, the tortured heart, for the first time since the ruthless 
close of that brief honeymoon, felt the heavenly delight of 
repose. 

“Oh, Edward!” murmured the young wife, “how strange it 
seems to be happy!” 

He was at her feet, half-kneeling, half-sitting on a hassock of 
Hester’s handiwork, with both his wife’s hands clasped in bis, 
and his head leaning upon the arm of her chair. Hester Jobson 
had carried off the baby, and these two were quite alone, all in 
all to each other, with a cruel gap of two years to be bridged 
over by sorrowful memories, by tender words of consolation. 
They were alone, and they could talk quite freely now, without 
fear of interruption; for "although in purity and beauty an in¬ 
fant is first cousin to the angels, and although I most heartily 
concur in all that Mr. Bennett and Mr. Buchanan can say or 
sing about the species, still it must be owned that a baby is 
rather a hinderance to conversation, and that a man's eloquence 
does not flow quite so smoothly when he has to stop every now 
and then to rescue his infant son from -the imminent peril of 
strangulation, caused by a futile attempt at swallowing one of 
his own fists. 

Mary and Edward were alone; they were together once more, 
as they had been by the trout-stream in the Winchester mead¬ 
ows. "A curtain had fallen upon all the wreck and ruin of the 
past, and they could hear the soft, mysterious music that was 
to be the prelude of a new act in life’s drama. 

“ I shall try to forget all that time,” Mary said, presently; “I 
^hall try to forget it, Edward. 1 think the very memory of it 


328 


JOHN MARCmiONT’S LEGACY. 

would kill me, if it was to come back perpetually in the midst 
of my jov, as it does now, even now, when I am so happy—so 
happy that I dare not speak of my happiness.” , 

She stopped, and her face drooped upon her husband s clus¬ 
tering hair. 

“ You are crying, Marv!” 

“ Yes, dear. There is something painful in happiness when it 
comes after such suffering.” 

The young man lifted his head, and looked in his wife’s face. 
How deathly pale it was, even in that shadowy twilight; how 
worn and haggard and wasted since it had smiled at him in his 
brief honeymoon! Yes, joy is painful when it comes after a 
long continuance of suffering; it is painful because we have 
become skeptical by reason of the endurance of such anguish. 
We have lost the power to believe in happiness. It comes, the 
bright stranger; but we shrink appalled from its beauty, lest, 
after all, it should be nothing but a phantom. 

Heaven knows how anxiously Edward Arundel looked at his 
wife’s altered face. Her eyes shone upon him with the holy 
light of love. She smiled at him with a tender, reassuring smile; 
but it seemed to him that there was something almost supernal 
in the brightness of that white, wasted face; something that 
reminded him of the countenance of a martyr who has ceased 
to suffer the anguish of death in a foretaste of the joys of 
heaven. 

‘‘Mary,” he said, presently, “tell me every cruelty that Paul 
Marchmontor his tools inflicted upon you; tell me everything, 
and I will never speak of our miserable separation again. I will 
only punish the cause of it,” he added, in an undertone. “ Tell 
me, dear. It will be painful for you to speak of it, but it will 
be only once. There are some things I must know. Remem¬ 
ber, darling, that you are in my arms now, and that nothing but 
death can ever again part us.” 

The young man had his arms round his wife. He felt, rather 
than heard, a low, plaintive sigh as he spoke those last words. 

“ Nothing but death, Edward; nothing but death,” Mary said, 
in a solemn whisper. “Death would not come to me when I 
was very miserable. I used to pray that I might die, and the 
baby too; for I could not have borne to leave him behind. I 
thought that we might both be buried with you, Edward. I 
have dreamed sometimes that I was lying by your side in a 
tomb, and I have stretched out my dead hand to clasp yours. I 
used to beg and entreat them to let me be buried with you when 
I died, for I believed that you were dead, Edward. I believed 
it most firmly. I had not even one lingering hope that you 
were alive. If I had felt such a hope, no power upon earth 
would have kept me prisoner.” 

“ The wretches!” muttered Edward between his set teeth; “ the 
dastardly wretches! the foul liars!” 

“ Don't, Edward; don’t, darling. There is a pain in my heart 
when I hear you speak like that. I know how wicked they have 
been; how cruel—how cruel. I look back at all my suffering as 
if it were some one else who suffered; for, now that you are with 


JOHN MAHCHMONT’S LEGACY 


821 


me, I cannot believe that miserable, lonely, despairing creature 
was really me—the same creature whose head now rests upon 
your shoulder, whose breath is mixed with yours. 1 look back and 
see all my past misery, and I cannot forgive them, Edward; I 
am very wicked, for I cannot forgive my cousin Paul and his 
sister—yet. But I don’t want you to speak of them; I only want 
you to love me; I only want you to smile at me, and tell me 
again and again and again that nothing can part us now—but 
death.” 


She paused for a few moments, exhausted by having spoken so 
long. Her head lay upon her husband’s shoulder, and she clung 
a little closer to him, with a slight shiver. 

“ What is the matter, darling?” 


“ I feel as if it couldn’t be real.” 
“ What dear ?” 


** The present—all this joy. Oh. Edward, is it real? Is it—is it ? 
Or am I only dreaming? Shall I wake presently and feel the 
cold air blowing in at the window, and see the moonlight on the 
wainscot at Stony Stringford ? Is ic all real?” 

“ It is my precious one. As real as the mercy of God, who 
will give you compensation for all you have suffered! as real as 
God’s venegeance, which will fall most heavily upon your perse¬ 
cutors. x4.nd now, darling, tell me—tell me all. I must know 
the story of these two miserable years during which I have 
mourned for my lost love.” 

Mr. Arundel forgot to mention that during those two miser¬ 
able years he had engaged himself to become the husband of 
another woman. But perhaps, even when he is best and truest, 
a man is always just a shade behind a woman in the matter of 
constancy. 


“ When you left me in Hampshire, Edward, I was very, very 
miserable,” Mary began in a low voice; “but I knew that it 
was selfish and wicked of me to think only of myself. I tried 
to think of your poor father, who was ill and suffering, and I 
prayed for him, and hoped that he would recover, and that you 
would come back to me very soon. The people at the inn were 
very kind to me. I sat at the window from morning till night 
upon the day after you left me and upon the day after that; for I 
was so foolish as to fancy, every time I heard the sound of horses’ 
hoofs or carriage-wheels upon the high-road, that you were 
coming back to me, and that all my grief was over. I sat at the 
window and watched the road till I knew the shape of every 
tree and housetop, every ragged branch of the hawthorn-bushes 
in the hed^e. At last—it was the third day after you went 
awav _I heard carriage-wheels, that slackened as they came to 
the inn. A flv stopped at the door, and oh, Edward, I did not 
wait to see who was in it; I never imagined the possibility of its 
bringing anybody but vou. I rail down-stairs, with my heart 
beating so that I could* hardly breathe, and I scarcely felt the 
stairs under my feet. But when I got to the door oh, my love, 
my love—I cannot bear to think of it; I cannot endure the re¬ 
collection of it-” 


JOHN MAUCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


She stopped, gasping for breath, and clinging to her husband; 
and then, with an effort, went on again: 

“Yes, I will tell you dear; I must tell you. My cousin Paul 
and my step-mother were standing in the little hail at the foot 
of the stairs. 1 think I fainted in my step-mother's arms; aud 
when my consciousness came back, I was in our sittiug-room— 
the pretty rustic room, Edward, in which you and I have been 
so happy together. 

“ I must not stop to tell you everything. It would take me so 
long to speak of all that happened in that miserable time. I 
knew that something must be wrong, from my cousin Paul’s 
manner; but neither he nor my step-mother would tell me what 
it was. I asked them if you were dead; but they said ‘ No, you 
were not dead.’ Still T could see that something dreadful had 
happened. But, by and by, by accident, I saw your name in a 
newspaper that was lying on the table with Paul’s hat and 
gloves. I saw the description of an accident on the railway by 
which I knew you had traveled. My heart sank at once, and I 
think I guessed all that happened. I read your name among 
those of the people who had been dangerously hurt. Paul shook 
his head when I asked him if there was any hope. 

“ They brought me back here. I scarcely know bow I came, 
how I endured all that misery. I implored them to let me come 
to you again and again, on my knees at their feet. But neither 
of them would listen to me. It was impossible, Paul said. He 
always seemed very, very kind to me; always spoke softly; 
always told me that he pitied me, and was sorry for me. But 
though my step mother looked sternly at me, and spoke, as she 
always used to speak, in a harsh, cold voice, I sometimes think 
she might have given way at last and let me come to you, but 
for him—but for my cousin Paul. He could look at me with a 
smile upon his face when I was almost mad with my misery; 
and he never wavered; he never hesitated. 

“ So they took me back to the Towers. I let them take me; 
for I scarcely felt my sorrow any longer. I only felt tired; oh, 
so dreadfully tired; and I wanted to lie down upon the ground 
in some quiet place, where no one could come near me. I 
thought that I was dying. I believe I was very ill when we got 
back to the Towers. My step-mother and Barbara Simmons 
watched by my bedside day after day, night after night. Some¬ 
times I knew them; sometiraas I had all sorts of fancies. And 
often—ah, how offceu, darling!—I thought that you were with 
me. My cousin Paul came every day and stood by my bedside. 

I can’t tell you how hateful it was to me to have him there. 
He used to come into the room as silently as if he had been 
walking upon snow; but however noiselessly he came, however 
fast asleep I was when he entered the room, I always knew that 
he was there, standing by my bedside, smiling at me. I always 
woke with a shuddering horror thrilling through my veins, as 
if a rat had run across my face. 

“ By and by, when the delirium was quite gone, I felt ashamed 
of myself for this. It seemed so wicked to feel this unreason 
able antipathy to my dear father’s cousin; but he had brought 


John marchmont *s leg a o y. 


mi 


me bad news of you, Edward, and it was scarcely strange that I 
should hate him. One day he sat down by my bedside, when I 
was getting better, and was strong enough to talk. There was 
no one besides ourselves in the room, except my step-mother, 
and she was standing at the window, with her head turned away 
from us, looking out. My cousin Paul sat down by the bedside, 
and began to talk to me in that gentle, compassionate way that 
used to torture me and irritate me in spite of myself. 

“ He asked me what had happened to me after my leaving the 
Towers on the day after the ball. 

“I told him everything, Edward—about your coming to me 
in Oakley Street—about your marriage. But, oh! my darling, 
my husband, he wouldn’t believe me—he wouldn’t believe. 
^Nothing that I could say would make him believe me. Though 
1 swore to him again and again—by my dead father in heaven, 
as I hoped for the mercy of my God—that I had spoken the 
truth, and the truth only, he wouldn’t believe me—he wouldn’t 
believe. He shook his head, and said he scarcely wondered I 
should try to deceive him; that it was a very sad story, a very 
miserable and shameful story, and my attempted falsehood was 
little more than natural. 

“ And then he spoke against you, Edward—against you. He 
spoke of my childish ignorance, my confiding love, and your 
villainy. Oh, Edward, he said such shameful things—such 
shameful, horrible things! You had plotted to become master 
of my fortune; to get me into your power, because of my 
money, and you had not married me. You had not married me; 
he persisted in saying that. 

“ I was delirious again after this—almost mad, I think. All 
through the delirium I kept telling my cousin Paul of our mar¬ 
riage. Though he was very seldom in the room, I constantly 
thought that he was there, and told him the same thing—the 
same thing—till my brain was on fire. I don’t know how long 
it lasted. I know that, once in the middle of the night, I saw 
my step-mother lying upon the ground, sobbing aloud, and cry 
ing out about her wickedness; crying out that God would never 
forgive her sin. 

“ I got better at last, and then I went down-stairs; and I used 
to sit sometimes in poor papa’s study. The blind was always 
down, and none of the servants, except Barbara Simmons, ever 
came into the room. My cousin Paul did not live at the Towers; 
but he came there every day, and often stayed there all day. 
He seemed the master of the bouse. My step-mother obeyed 
him in everything, and consulted him about everything. 

Sometimes Mrs. Weston came. She was like her brother. She 
always smiled at me with a grave, compassionate smile, just like 
his; and she always seemed to pity me. But she wouldn’t believe 
in my marriage. She spoke cruelly about you, Edward—cruelly, 
but in soft words, that seemed only spoken out of compassion 
for me. No one would believe in my marriage. 

“ No stranger was allowed to see me. I was never suffered to 
go out. They treated me as if I was some shameful creature, 
who must be hidden away from the sight of the world. 


JOHN MARCBMONT'S LEGACY. 


“One day I entreated my cousin Paul to go to London and 
see Mrs. Pimpernel. She would be able to tell him of our mar 
dage. I had forgotten the name of the clergyman who mar 
ried us, and the church at which we were married. And I 
could not tell Paul those; but I gave him Mrs. Pimpernel’s ad¬ 
dress. And I wrote to her, begging her to tell my cousin all 
about my marriage; and I gave him the note unsealed. 

“ He went to London about a week afterward; and when he 
came back he brought me my note. He had been to Oakley 
Street, he said; but Mrs. Pimpernel had left the neighborhood, 
and no one knew where she was gone.” 

“ A lie! a villainous lie!” muttered Edward Arundel. “Oh, 
the scoundrel! the infernal scoundrel!” 

“ No words w r ould ever tell the misery of that time; the bit¬ 
ter anguish; the unendurable suspense. When" I asked them 
about you they would tell me nothing. Sometimes I thought 
that you had forgotten me; that you had only married me out 
of pity for my loneliness; and that you were glad to be freed 
from me. Oh, forgive me, Edward, for that wicked thought; 
but I was so miserable, so utterly desolate. At other times I 
fancied that you were very ill, helpless, and unable to come to 
me. I dared not think that you were dead. I put away that 
thought from me with all my might; but it haunted me day 
and night. It was with me always like a ghost. I tried to shut 
it away from my sight; but I knew that it was there. 

“The days were all alike—long, dreary,, and desolate: so I 
scarcely knew how the time went. My step-mother brought me 
religious books, and told me to read them; but they were hard, 
difficult books, and I couldn’t find one word of comfort in them. 
They must have been written to frighten very obstinate and 
wicked people, I think. The only book that ever gave me any 
comfort was that dear Book I used to read to papa on a Sunday 
evening in Oakley Street. I read that. Edward, in those miser¬ 
able days; I read the story of the widow’s dnly son who was 
raised up from the dead because his mother was so wretched 
without him. I read that sweet, tender story again and again, 
until I used to see the funeral train, the pale still face upon the 
bier, the white uplifted hand, and that sublime and lovely coun 
tenance. whose image always comes to us when we are most 
miserable, the tremulous light upon the golden hair, and in the 
distance the glimmering columns of white temples, the palm- 
trees standing out against the purple Eastern sky. I thought 
that He who raised up a miserable woman's son chiefly because 
he was her only son, and she was desolate without him, would 
have more pity upon me than the God in Olivia’s books; and I 
prayed to Him, Edward, night and day, imploring Him to bring 
you back to me. 

“ I don’t know what day it was, except that it was autumn, 
a nd the dead leaves were blowing about in the quadrangle, when 
my step-mother sent for me one afternoon to my room, where I 
wa3 sitting, not reading, not even thinking—only sitting with 
my head upon my hands, staring stupidly out at the drift¬ 
ing leaves and the gray, cold sky. My step-mother was in 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


333 


papa’s study, and I was to go to her there. I went, and found 
her standing there, with a letter crumpled up in her clinched 
hand, and a slip of newspaper lying on the table before her. She 
was as white as death, and she was trembling violently from 
head to foot. 

“ ‘ See,’ she said, pointing to the paper; 4 your lover is dead. 
But for you he would have received the letter that told him of 
his father’s illness upon an earlier day; he would have gone to 
Devonshire by a different tram. It was by your doing that he 
traveled when he did. If this is true, and he is dead, his blood 
be upon your head—his blood be upon your head!’ 

44 I think her cruel words were almost exactly those. I did 
not hope for a minute that those horrible lines in the newspaper 
were false. I thought they must be true, and I was mad, Ed¬ 
ward—I was mad; for utter despair came to me with the knowl¬ 
edge of your death. I went to my own room, and put on my 
bonnet and shawl; and then I went out of the house, down into 
that dreary wood, and^along the narrow pathway by the river¬ 
side. I wanted to drown myself; but the sight of the black 
water filled me with a shuddering horror. I was frightened, 
Edward; and I went on by the river, scarcely knowing where I 
was going, until it was quite dark; and I was tired, and sat 
down upon the damp ground by the brink of the river, all among 
the broad green flags and the wet rushes. I sat there for hours, 
and I saw the stars shining feebly in a dark sky. I think I was 
delirious; for sometimes I knew that I was there by the water¬ 
side, and then the next minute I thought that I was in my bed¬ 
room at the Towers; sometimes 1 fancied that I was with you 
in the meadows near Winchester, and the sun was shining, and 
you were sitting by my side, and I could see your float dancing 
up and down in the sunlit water. At last, after I had been there 
a very, very long time, two people came with a lantern, a man 
and a woman; and I heard a startled voice say, 4 Here she is: 
here, lying on the ground!’ And then another voice, a woman’s 
voice, very low and frightened, said, 4 Alive! 5 And then two 
people lifted me up; the man carried me in his arms, and the 
woman took the lantern. I couldn’t speak to them; but I knew 
that they were my cousin Paul and his sister Mrs. Weston. Ire- 
member being carried some distance in Paul’s arms; and then I 
think I must have fainted away; for I can recollect nothing 
more until I woke up one day and found myself lying in a bed 
in the pavilion over the boat-house, with Mr. Weston w T atchmg 

by my bedside. , ., 

44 1 don't know how the time passed; I only know that it 
seemed endless. I think mv illness was rheumatic fever, caught 
by IviDg on the damp ground nearly all that night when I ran 
away from the Towers. A long time went by; there was frost 
and snow. I saw the river once out of the window when I was 
lifted out of the bed for an hour or two, and it was frozen; and 
once at midnight I heard the Kemberling church bells ringing 
in the New Year. I was very ill, but I had no doctor; and all 
that time I saw no one but my cousin Paul and Lavima Wes¬ 
ton, and a servant called Betsy, a rough country girl, who took 


JOHN MARCHM6NT’S LEGACY, 


334 

care of me when my cousins were away. They were kind to 
me, and took great care of me.” 

“ You did not see Olivia, then, all this time ?” Edward asked, 
eagerly. 

** No; 1 did not see my step-mother till some time after the 
New Year began. She came in suddenly one evening, when 
Mrs. Weston was with me, and at first she seemed frightened at 
seeing me. She spoke to me kindly afterward, but in a strange, 
terror-stricken voice, and she laid her head down upon the 
counterpane of the bed, and sobbed aloud: and then Paul took 
her away, and spoke to her cruelly, very cruelly—taunting 
her with her love for you. I never understood till then why she 
hated me; but I pitied her after that; yes, Edward, miserable as 
I was, I pitied her, because you had never loved her. In all my 
wretchedness I was happier than her; for you bad loved me, 
Edward—you had loved me!” 

Mary lifted her face to her husband’s lips, and those dear lips 
were pressed tenderly upon her pale forehead. 

“ Oh, my love, my love!” the young man murmured; “ my 
poor suffering angel! Can God ever forgive these people for 
their cruelty to you V But, my darling, w hy did you make no 
effort to escape ?” 

I was too ill to move; I believed that I was dying.” 

“ But afterward, darling, when you were better, stronger, did 
you make no effort then to escape from your persecutors ?” 

Mary shook her head mournfully. 

“ Why should I try to escape from them ?” she said. “ What 
was there for me beyond that place? It was as well for me to 
be there as any where else. I thought you were dead, Edward, 
I thought you were dead, and life held nothing more for me. 
I could do nothing but wait till He who raised the widow’s sou 
should have pity upon me, and take me to the heaven where I 
thought you and papa had gone before me. I didn’t want to go 
away from those dreary rooms over the boat-house. What did 
it matter to me whether I was there or at Marchmont, Towers? 
I thought you were dead, and all the glories and grandeurs of 
the world were nothing to me. Nobody ill-treated me; I was 
let alone. Mrs. Weston told me that it was for my own sake 
they kept me hidden from everybody about the Towers. I was 
a poor, disgraced girl, she told me; and it was best for me to 
stop quietly in the pavilion till people had fgot tired talking of 
me, and then my cousin Paul would take me away to the Con¬ 
tinent, where no one would know who I was. She told me that 
the honor of my father’s name, and of ray family altogether, 
would be saved by this means. I replied that I had brought no 
dishonor on my dear father’s name; but she only shook her head 
mournfully, and I was too weak to dispute with her. What 
did it matter? I thought you were dead, and that the world 
was finished for me. I sat day after day by the window not 
looking out, for there was a Venetian blind that my cousin 
Paul had nailed down to the window-sill, and I could only see 
glimpses of the water through the long, narrow openings be¬ 
tween the laths. I used to sit there listening to the moaning of 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


mb 


fche wind among the trees, or the sounds of horses’ feet upon the 
towing-path, or the rain dripping into the river upon wet days. 
I think that even in my deepest misery God was good to me, for 
my mind sank into a dull apathy, and I seemed to lose even the 
capacity of suffering. 

“ One day—one day in March, when the wind was howling, 
and the smoke blew down the narrow chimney and filled the 
room—Mrs. Weston brought her husband, and he talked to me 
a little, and then talked to his wife in whispers. He seemed 
terribly frightened, and he trembled all the time, and kept say¬ 
ing, ‘ Poor thing, poor young woman!’ but his wife was cross to 
him, and wouldn’t'let him stop long in the room. After that 
Mr. Weston came very often, always wdth Lavinia, who seemed 
cleverer than he was, even as a doctor: for she dictated to him, 
and ordered him about in everything. Then, by and by, when 
the birds were singing and the warm sunshine came into the 
room, my baby was born, Edward—my bab}* was born. I 
thought that God, who raised the widow’s son, had heard my 
prayer, and had raised you up from the dead; for the baby’s 
eyes w r ere like yours, and I used to think sometimes that your 
soul was looking out of them and comforting me. 

“ Do you remember that poor foolish German woman who be- 
lieved that the spirit of a dead king came to her in the shape of 
a raven? She was not a good woman, I know, dear; but she 
must have loved the king very truly, or she never could have 
believed anything so foolish. I don’t believe in people’s love 
when they love 4 wisely,’ Edward: the truest love is that which 
‘ loves too well.’ 

“ From the time of my baby’s birth everything was changed. 
I was more miserable, perhaps, because that dull, dread apathy 
cleared away, and my memory came back, and I thought of 
you, dear, and cried over my little angel’6 face as he slept. But 
I wasn’t alone any longer. The. world seemed narrowed into 
the little circle round mv darling’s cradle. I don’t think he is 
like other babies, Edward. I think he has known of my sor¬ 
row from the very first, and has tried in his mute way to com¬ 
fort me. The God who worked so many miracles, all separate 
tokens of His love and tenderness and pity for the sorrows of 
mankind, could easily make my baby different from other 
children, for a wretched mother’s consolation. 

“In the autumn after my darling’s birth, Paul and his sister 
came for me one night, and took me away from the pavilion by 
the water to a deserted farm-house, where there was a woman 
to wait upon me and take care of me. She was not unkind to 
me, but she was rather neglectful of me. I did not mind that, 
for I wanted nothing except to be alone with my precious boy 
—your son, Edward; your son. The woman let me walk in the 
garden sometimes. It was a neglected garden, but there were 
bright flowers growing wild, and when the spring came again 
my pet used to lie on the grass and play with the butter-cups 
and daisies that I threw into his lap; and I think we were both 
of us happier and better than we had been in those two close 
rooms over the boat-house. 


JOHN MARCHMONTS LEGACY. 


“ I have told you all uow, Edward -all except what happened 
this morning, when my step-mother and Hester Jobson came 
into my room in the early daybreak, and told me that I had been 
deceived, and that you were alive. My step-mother threw her- 
self upon her knees at my feet, and asked me to forgive her, for 
she was a miserable sinner, she said, who had been abandoned 
by God; and I forgave her, Edward, and kissed her; and you 
you must forgive her, too, dear, for I know that she has been 
very, very wretched. And she took the baby in her arms, and 
kissed him—oh, so passionately!—and cried over him. And then 
they brought me here in Mr. Jobson’s cart, for Mr. Jobson was 
with them, and Hester held me in her arms all the time. And 
then, darling, then, after a long time, you came to me/’ 

Edward put his arms round his wife, and kissed her once 
more. “ We will never speak of this again, darling,” he said. 
“ I know all now; I understand it all. I will never again dis¬ 
tress you by speaking of your cruel wrongs.” 

“ And you will forgive Olivia, dear?” 

“ Yes, my pet, I will forgive—Olivia.” 

He said no more, for there was a footstep on the stair, and a 
glimmer of light shone through the crevices' of the door. 
Hester Jobson came into the room with a pair of lighted wax- 
candles in white crockery candlesticks. But Hester was not 
alone; close behind her came a lady in a rustling silk gown, a 
tall, matronly lady, who cried out: 

‘‘Where is she, Edward? Where is she? Let me see this 
poor ill-used child ?” 

It was Mrs. Arundel, who had come to Kemberling to see her 
newlv-found daughter-in-law. 

“ Oh, my dear mother,” cried the young man, “ how good of 
you to come! Now, Mary, you need never again know what it 
is to want a protector, a tender, womanly protector, who will 
shelter you from every harm.” 

Mary got up and went to Mrs. Arundel, who opened her 
arms to receive her son’s young wife. But before she folded 
Mary to her friendly breast, she took the girl’s two hands in 
hers, and looked earnestly at her pale, wasted face. 

She gave a long sigh as she contemplated those wan features, 
the shining light in the eyes that looked unnaturally large by 
reason of the girl’s hollow cheeks. 

“ Oh, my dear,” cried Mrs. Arundel, “my poor, long-suffering 
child, how cruelly they have treated you!” 

Edward looked at his mother, frightened by the earnestness 
of her manner; but she smiled at him with a bright, reassuring 
look. 

“ I shall take you home to Daugerfield with me, my poor 
love,” she said to Mary; “ and I shall nurse you and make you 
as plump as a partridge, my poor wasted pet. And I’ll be a 
mother to you, my motherless child. Oh, to think that there 

should be any wretch vile enough to-But I won’t agitate 

you, ray dear. I’ll take you away from this bleak horrid county 
by the first train to-morrow morning, and you shall sleep to¬ 
morrow night in the blue bed-room at Dangerfield, with the 


JOB .V MARCHMONT’8 LEGACY, 


roses and myrtles waving against your window: and Edward 
shall go with us, and you sba’n’t come back here till you’re well 
and strong; and you’ll try and love me, won’t you, dear? And 
oh, Edward, I’ve seen the boy! and he’s a superb creatine, 
the very image of what you were at a twelve month old—and he 
came to me, almost as if he knew I was his grandmother: and 
he has got five teeth, but I’m sorry to tell you lie’s cutting them 
crosswise, the top first instead of the bottom, Hester says.” 

“And Belinda, mother dear?” Edward said presently, in a 
grave undertone. 

“Belinda is an angel,” Mrs. Arundel answered, quite as 
gravely. “ She has been in her own room all day, and no one 
has seen her but her mother; but she came down to the hall as 
I was leaving the house this evening, and said to me, * Dear 
Mrs. Arundel, tell him that he must not think 1 am so selfish as 
to be sorry for what has happened. Tell him that I am very 
glad to think his young wife hasbeeu saved.’ She put her hand 
up to my lips to stop my speaking, and then went back a||ain to 
her room; and if that isn’t acting like an angel, I don’t know 
what is.” 


CHAPTER XLI. 

“ all within is dark as night.” 

Paul Marchmont did not leave Stony Stringford Farm 
house till dusk upon that bright summer’s day; and the friendly 
twilight is slow to come in the early days of July, however 
a man may loathe the sunshine. Paul Marchmont stopped 
at the deserted farm-house, wandering in and out of the 
empty rooms, strolling listlessly about the neglected garden, or 
coming to a dead stop sometimes, and standing stock still for 
ten minutes at a time, staring at the wall before him, and count¬ 
ing the slimy traces of the snails upon the branches of a plum- 
tree, or the flies in a spider’s web. Paul Marchmont was afrakl 
to leave that lonely farm-house. He was afraid as yet. He 
scarcely knew vyhat he feared, for a kind of stupor had succeeded 
the violent emotions of the past few hours; and the time slipped 
by him, and his brain grew bewildered when he tried to realize 

his position. „ , . mi . ^ 

It was very difficult for him to do this. The calamity that 
had come upon him was a calamity that he had never 
anticipated. He was a clever man, and he had put his trust 
in his own cleverness. He had never expected to be found 

Until this hour everything had been in his favor. His dupes 
and victims had played into his hands. Mary’s grief, which had 
rendered her a passive creature, utterly indifferent to her own 
fate—her peculiar education, which had taught her everything 
except knowledge of the world in which she was to live—had 
enabled Paul Marchmont to carry out a scheme so infamous 
and daring that it was beyond the suspicion of honest men, al¬ 
most too base for the comprehension of ordinary villains. 

He had never expected to be found out. All his plans had 


John marchmont*s lkgac\. 


beeD deliberately and carefully prepared. Immediately after 
Edward’s marriage and safe departure for the Continent, Paul 
had intended to convey Mary and the child, with the grim at¬ 
tendant whom he had engaged for them-, far away, to one of 
the remotest villages in Wales. 

Alone he would have done this; traveling by night, and 
trusting no one; for the hired attendant knew nothing of Mary’s 
real position. She had been told that the girl was a poor rela¬ 
tion of Paul’s, and that her story was a very sorrowful one. If 
the poor creature had strange fancies and delusions, it was no 
more than might be expected; for she had suffered enough to 
turn a stronger brain than her own. Everything bad been ar¬ 
ranged, and so cleverly arranged, that Mary and the child would 
disappear after dusk one summer evening, and not even Lavinia 
Weston would be told whither they had gone. 

Paul had never expected to he found out. But he had least 
of all expected betrayal from the quarter whence it had come. 
He had made Olivia his tool; but he bad acted cautiously even 
with her. He had confided nothing to her; and although she 
had suspected some foul play in the matter of Mary’s disappear¬ 
ance, she had been certain of nothing. She had uttered no 
falsehood when she swore to Edward Arundel that she did not 
know where his wife was. But for her accidental discovery of 
the secret of the pavilion, she would never have known of 
Mary’s existence after that October afternoon on which the girl 
left Marchmont Towers. 

But here Paul had been betrayed by the carelessness of the 
hired girl who acted as Mary Arundel’s jailer and attendant. It 
was Olivia’s habit to wander often in that dreary wood by the 
water during the winter in which Mary was kept prisoner in the 
pavilion over the boat-house. Lavinia Weston and Paul March¬ 
mont spent each of them a great deal of their time in the pa¬ 
vilion; but they could not be always on guard there. There w as 
the world to be hoodwinked; and the surgeon’s wife had to per¬ 
form all her duties as a matron before the face of Kemberling, 
and had to give some plausible account of her frequent visits to 
the boat-house. Paul liked the place for his painting, Mrs. 
Weston informed her friends; and he was so enthusiastic in his 
jove of art, that it was really a pleasure to participate in his 
'enthusiasm; so she liked to sit with him, end talk to him or 
read to him while he painted. This explanation was quite 
enough for Kemberling, and Mrs. Weston went to the pavilion 
at Marchmont Towers three or four times a week without caus¬ 
ing any scandal thereby. 

But however well you may manage things yourself, it is not 
always easy to secure the careful co-operation of the people you 
employ. Betsy Muriel was a stupid, narrow-minded young per¬ 
son, who was very safe so far as regarded the possibility of any 
sympathy with, or compassion for, Mary Arundel arising in her 
stolid nature; but the stupid stolidity which made her safe in 
one way rendered her dangerous in another. One day, while 
Mrs. Weston was with the hapless young prisoner, Miss Murrel 
went out upon the water-side to converse with a good-looking 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


389 


young bargeman, who was a connection of her family, and per¬ 
haps an admirer of the young lady herself; and the door of the 
painting-room being left wide open, Olivia Marchmont wan¬ 
dered listlessly into the pavilion—there was a dismal fascination 
for her in that spot, on which she had heard Edward Arundel 
declare his love for John Marchmont’s daughter—and heard 
Mary’s voice in the chamber at the top of the stone steps. 

This was how Olivia had surprised Paul’s secret; and from 
that hour it had been the artist’s business to rule this woman by 
the only weapon which he possessed against her—her own 
secret, her own weak folly, her mad love of Edward Arundel 
and jealous hatred of the woman whom he had loved. This 
weapon was a very powerful one, and Paul used it unsparingly. 

When the woman who for seven-and-twenty years of her life 
bad lived without sin, who from the hour in which she had been 
old enough to know right from wrong until Edward Arundel's 
second return from India had sternly done her duty—when this 
woman, who little by little had slipped away from her high 
standing-point and sunk down into a morass of sin—when 
this woman remonstrated with Mr. Marchmont he turned upon 
her and lashed her with the scourge of her own folly. 

“ You come and upbraid me,” he said, “ and you call me vil¬ 
lain and arch-traitor, and say that you cannot abide this your 
sin; and that your guilt, in keeping our secret, cries to you in 
the dead hours of the night; and you call upon me to undo what 
I have done, and to restore Mary Marchmont to her rights. Do 
you remember what her highest right is? Do you remember 
that which I must restore to her when I give her back this house 
and the income that goes along with it? If I restore March¬ 
mont Towers I must restore to her Edward ArundeVs love. You 
have forgotten that, perhaps. If she ever re-enters this house 
she* will come back to it leaning on his arm. You will see them 
together. You will hear of their happiness; and do you think 
that he will ever forgive you for your part of the conspiracy? 
Yes, it is a conspiracy, if you like. If you are not afraid to call 
it by a hard name, why should I fear to do so? Will he ever 
forgive you, do you think, when he knows that his young wife 
has been the victim of a senseless, vicious love ? Yes, Olivia 
Marchmont, any love is vicious which is given unsought, and is 
so strong a passion, so blind and unreasoning a folly, that honor, 
mercy, truth, and Christianity are trampled down before it. 
How will you endure Edward Arundel’s contempt for you? 
How will you tolerate his love for Mary, multiplied twentyfold 
bv all this romantic business of separation and persecution ? 

“You talk to me of my sin. Who was it who first sinned ? 
Who was it who drove Mary Marchmont from this house—not 
once only, but twice—by her cruelty ? Who was it who perse¬ 
cuted her and tortured her day by day and hour by hour, not 
openly, not with an uplifted hand or blows that could be warded 
off, but by cruel hints and innuendoes, by unwomanly sneers 
and hellish taunts. Look into your heart, Olivia Marchmont; 
and when you make atonement for your sin I will make restitu¬ 
tion for mine. Tn the meantime, if this business is painful to 


S40 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


you, the way lies open before you; go and take Edward Arundel 
to the pavilion yonder, and give him back his wife; give the lie 
to all your past life, and restore these devoted young lovers to 
each other’s arms.” 

This weapon never failed in its effect; Olivia Marchmont might 
loathe herself, and her sin, and her life, which was made hideous 
to her because of her sin; but she could not bring herself to re¬ 
store Mary to her lover-husband; she could not tolerate the idea 
of their happiness. Every night she groveled on her knees, and 
swore to her offended God that she would do this thing, she 
would render this sacrifice of atonement; but every morning, 
when her weary eyes opened on the hateful sunlight, she cried, 
“ Not to-day, not to-day.” 

Again and again, during Edward Arundel’s residence at Kem- 
berling Retreat, she had set out from Marchmont Towers with 
the intention of revealing to him the place where his young 
wife was hidden; but again and again she had turned back and 
left her work undone. She could not; she could not. In the 
dead of the night, under pouring rain, with the bleak winds of 
winter blowing in her face, she had set out upon that unfinished 
journey, only to stop midway, aud cry out “ No, no, no; not to¬ 
night; I cannot endure it yet!” 

It was only when another and a fiercer jealousy was awakened 
in this woman’s breast that she arose all at once, strong, resolute, 
and undaunted, to do the work she had so miserably deferred. 
As one poison is said to neutralize the evil power of another, so 
Olivia Marchmont’s jealousy of Belinda seemed to blot out and 
extinguish her hatred of Mary. Better anything than that Ed¬ 
ward Arundel should have a new and perhaps a fairer bride. The 
jealous woman had always looked upon Mary Marchmont as a 
despicable rival. Better that Edward should be tied to this girl 
than that he should rejoice in the smiles of a lovelier woman, 
worthier of bis affection. This was the feeling paramount in 
Olivia’s breast, although she was herself half unconscious how 
entirely this was the motive power which had given her new 
strength and resolution. She tried to think that it was the 
awakening of her conscience that had made her strong enough 
to do this one good work; but, in the semi-darkness of her own 
mind, there was still a feeble glimmer of the light of truth; and 
it was this that had prompted her to cry out on her knees before 
the altar in Hillings worth Church, and declare the sinfulness of 
her nature. 

* * * * * * * 

Paul Marchmont stopped several times before the ragged, un¬ 
trimmed fruit-trees in his purposeless wanderings in the neg¬ 
lected garden, at Stony Stringford, before the vaporous confu 
sion cleared away from his brain, and he was able to understand 
what had happened to him. 

His first reasonable action was to take out his watch; but even 
then he stood for some moments staring at the dial before he re 
membered why he had taken the watch from his pocket, or 
what it was that he wanted to know. By Mr. Marchmont’s chro¬ 
nometer it was ten minutes past seven o'clock; but the watch 


JOHN MARCHMONT *S LEGACY. 


841 


had been unwound upon the previous night, and had run down. 
Paul put it back in his waistcoat-pocket, and then walked 
slowly along the weedy pathway to that low latticed window in 
which he bad often seen Mary Arundel standing with her child in 
her arms. He went to this window and looked in, with his face 
against the glass. The room was neat and orderly now, for the 
woman whom Mr. Marchmont had hired had gone about her 
work as usual, and was in the act of filling a little brown earth¬ 
en-ware tea-pot from a kettle on the hob when Paul stared 
in at her. 

She looked up as Mr. Marcbmont’s figure came between her 
and the light, and nearly dropped the little brown tea-pot in her 
terror of her offended employer. 

But Paul pulled open the window, and spoke to her very qui¬ 
etly: “ Stop where you are,” he said; “I want to speak to you; 
I’ll come in.” 

He went into the house by a door that had once been the front 
and principal entrance, which opened into a low wainscoted 
hall. From this room he went into the parlor, which had been 
Mary Arundel’s apartment, and in which the hired nurse was 
now preparing her breakfast. “I thought T might as well get 
a cup of tea, sir, while I waited for your orders,” the woman 
murmured, apologetically; “for bein’ knocked up so early this 
morning, you see, sir, has made my head that bad, I could 
scarcely bear myself; and-” 

PauHifted his hand to stop the woman’s talk, as he had done 
before. He had no consciousness of what she was saying, but 
the sound of her voice pained him. His eyebrows contracted 
with a spasmodic action, as if something had hurt his head. 

There was a Dutch clock in the corner of the room, with a 
long pendulum swinging against the wall. By this clock it was 
half past eight. 

“ Is your clock right?” Paul asked. 

“Yes, sir. Leastways it may be five minutes too slow; but 

not more.” , , , 

Mr. Marchmont took out his watch, wound it up, and regu 
lated it by the Dutch clock. 

“Now,” he said, “ perhaps you can tell me clearly what hap¬ 
pened. I want no excuses, remember; I only want to know 
what occurred and what was said, word for word, remem¬ 


ber! ” 

He sat down; but got up again directly and walked to the 
window; then he paced up and down the room two or three 
times, and then went back to the fireplace and sat down again. 
He was like a man who, in the racking torture of some physical 
pain, finds a miserable relief in his own restlessness. 

“Come,” he said ; “lam waiting,” 

“Yes, sir; which, begging your parding, if you wouldnt 
mind sitting still like, while I’m a telling ot vou, which it do 
remind me of the wild beasts in the Zoological, sir to that de¬ 
gree, that the boil to which I am subjeck, sir, and have been 
from a child, might prevent me bein’as truthful as I should 
wish. Mrs, Marchmount, sir. she come before it was light, m 


m JOHN MAROHMONT’S LEG ACT. 

a cart, sir, which it was a shaycart, and made comfortable with 
cushions and straw, and such like, or I should not have let the 
young lady go away in it; and she bring with her a respectable 
homely-looking young person, which she call Hester Jobling or 
Gobsoh, or somethink of that sound like, which my memory is 
treechrous, and I don't wish to tell a story on no account; 
and Mrs. Marchmount she go straight up to my young lady, and 
she shakes her by the shoulder; and then the young woman 
called Hester, she wakes up my young lady quite gentle like, and 
kisses her, and cries over her; and a man as drove the cart, 
which looked a small tradesman, well-to-do, brings his trap 
round to the front door—you may see the tracks of the wheels 
upon the gravel, now, sir, if you disbelieve me. And Mrs. 
Marchmount and the young woman called Hester, between ’em 
they gets my young lady up, and dresses her, and dresses the 
child, and does it all so quick, and overrides me to such a de¬ 
gree, that I hadn’t no power to prevent ’em; but I say to Mrs. 
Marchmount, I say: ‘ Is it Mr. March mount’s orders as his 
cousin should be took away this morning ?’ and she stare at me 
hard, and say, ‘ Yes;’ and she have alius an abrumpt way, but 
was abrumpter than ordinary this morning. And oh, sir, bein’ 
a pore lone woman, what was I to do?” 

“ Have you nothing more to tell me?” 

“ Nothing, sir; leastways except as they lifted my young lady 
into the cart, and the man got in after ’em, and drove away as 
fast as his horse would go; and they had been gone two minutes 
when I began to feel all in a tremble like, for fear as I might 
have done wrong in lettin’ of ’em go.” 

“ You did do wrong,” Paul answered, sternly; “ but no mat¬ 
ter. If these officious friends of my poor weak-witted cousin 
choose to take her away, so much the better for me, who has 
been burdened with her long enough. Since your charge has 
gone, your services are no longer wanted. I sha’n’t act illiberally 
to you, though I am very much annoyed by your folly and stu¬ 
pidity. Is there anything due to you ?” 

Mrs. Brown hesitated for a moment, and then replied, in a 
very insinuating tone: 

“ Not wages , sir; there ain’t no wages doo to me—which 
you paid me a quarter in advance last Saturday was a week, and 
took a receipt, sir, for the amount. But I have done my dooty, 
sir, and had but little sleep and rest, which my ’ealth ain’t what 
it was when I answered your advertisement requirin’ a respect¬ 
able motherly person to take charge of an invalid lady, not ob¬ 
jectin’ to the country—which I freely tell you, sir, if I’d known 
that the country was a rheumatic old place like this, with rats 
enough to scare away a regyment of soldiers, I would not have 
undertook the situation; so any present as you might think soot- 
able, considerin’ all things, and-” 

“ That will do,” said Paul Marcliraont, taking a handful of 
loose money from his waistcoat-pocket; “ I suppose a ten-pound 
note will satisfy you ?” 

“ Indeed it would, sir, and very liberal of you, too.” 

“Very well. I’ve got a five-pound note here, and five sover- 


John marchmont s legacy. 


m 


eigns. The best thing you can do is to get baclt to London at 
once; there’s a train leaves Milsome Station at eleven o’clock— 
Milsome’s not more than a mile and a half from here. You can 
get your things together; there’s a boy about the place who will 
carry them for you, I suppose.” 

“ Yes, sir; there’s a boy by the name of William.” 

“ He can go with you, then; and if you look sharp you can 
catch the eleven o’clock train.” 

“Yes, sir; and thank you kindly, sir.” 

“ I don’t want any thanks. See that you don’t miss the train; 
that’s all you have to take care of.” 

Mr. Marchmont went out into the garden again. He had done 
something, at any rate; he had arranged for getting this woman 
out of the way. 

If—if by any remote chance there might be yet a possibility 
of keeping the secret of Mary’s existence, here was one witness 
already got rid of. 

But was there any chance ? Mr. Marchmont sat down on a 
rickety old garden-seat, and tried to think—tried to take a de¬ 
liberate survey of his position. 

No; there was no hope for him. Look which way he could, 
there was not one ray of light. With George Weston and 
Olivia, Betsy Murrel, the servant-girl, and Hester Jobson, to 
bear* witness against him, what could he hope? 

The surgeon would be able to declare that the child was 
Mary’s son, her legitimate son, sole heir to that estate of which 
Paul had taken possession. 

There was no hope. There was no possibility that Olivia 
should waver in her purpose; for had she not brought with her 
two witnesses—Hester Jobson and her husband ? 

From that moment the case was taken out of her hands. The 
honest carpenter and his wife would see that Mary had her 
rights. 

“ It will be a glorious speculation for them,” thought Paul 
Marchmont, who naturally measured other people’s characters 
by a standard derived from an accurate knowledge of his own. 

Yes, his ruin was complete. Destruction had come upon him, f 
swift and sudden as the caprice of a madwoman—or—the thun¬ 
der-bolt of an offended Providence. What should he do? Run 
away, sneak away by back-lanes and narrow footpaths to the 
nearest railway-station, hide himself iu a third class carriage 
going Londonward, and from London get away to Liverpool, to 
creep on board some emigrant vessel bound for New York. 

He could not even do this; for he was without the means of 
getting so much as the railway-ticket that should carry him on 
the first stage of his flight. After having given ten pounds to 
Mrs. Brown, he had only a few shillings in his waistcoat-pocket. 
He had only one article of any value about him, and that was 
his watch, which had cost fifty pounds. But the Marchmont 
arms were emblazoned on the outside of the case, and Paul s 
name in full, and the address of Marchmont Towers were 
ostentatiously engraved inside, so that any attempt to dispose 


,814 John marchmont'S legacy. 

of the watch must inevitably lead to the identification of the 
owner. 

Paul Marchmout had made no provision for this evil day. 
Supreme in the consciousness of his own talents, he had never 
imagined discovery and destruction. His plans had been so well 
arranged. On the very day after Edward’s second marriage 
Mary and her child would have been conveyed away to the re¬ 
motest districts in Wales; and the artist would have laughed at 
the idea of danger. The shallow schemer might have been able 
to manage this poor broken-hearted girl, whose many sorrows 
had brought her to look upon life as a thing which was never 
meant to be joyful, and which was only to be endured pa¬ 
tiently, like some slow disease that would be surely cured in the 
grave. It had been so easy to deal with this ignorant and gen¬ 
tle victim that Paul had grown bold and confident, and had 
ignored the possibility of such ruin as had now come down 
upon him. 

What was he to do? What was the nature of bis crime, and 
what penalty had he incurred ? He tried to answer these ques¬ 
tions: but, as his offense was of no common kind, he knew of 
no common law which could apply to it. Was it a felony, this 
appropriation of another person’s property, this concealment of 
another person’s existence? or was it only a conspiracy amena¬ 
ble to no criminal law, and would he. be called upon merely to 
make restitution of that which he had spent and wasted ? What 
did it matter ? Either way there was nothing for him but ruin, 
irretrievable ruin. 

There are some men who can survive discovery and defeat, 
and begin a new life in a new world, and succeed in a new 
career. But Paul Marcbmont was not one of these. He could 
not stick a hunting-knife and a brace of revolvers in his leathern 
belt, sling a game-bag across his shoulders, take up his breech¬ 
loading rifle, and go out into the backwoods of an uncivilized 
country, to turn sheep-breeder, and hold his own against a race 
of agricultural savages. He was a cockney, and for him there 
was only one world—a world in which men wore varnished 
boots, and enameled shirt-studs with portraits of La Montespan 
or La Dtibarry. and lived in chambers in the Albany, and treated 
each other to little dinners at Greenwich and Richmond, or cut 
a grand figure at a country house, and collected a gallery of 
art and a museum of bric-a-brac. This was the world upon 
the outer edge of which Paul Marchmont had lived so long, 
looking in at the brilliant inhabitants with hungry, yearning 
eyes, through all the days of his poverty and obscurity. This 
was the world into which he had pushed himself at last by 
means of a crime. 

He was forty years of age; and in all his life he had never had 
but one ambition—and that was to be master of Marchmont 
Towers. The remote chance of that inheritance had hung be¬ 
fore him ever since his boyhood, a glittering prize, far away in 
the distance, but so brilliant as to blind him to the brightness of 
all nearer chances. Why should he slave at his easel, and toil 
to become a great painter ? When would art earn him eleven 


JOHN MARCHMONT *S LEO AC f. 


845 


thousand a year? The greatest painter of Mr. Marchmont's 
time lived in a miserable lodging at Chelsea. It was before 
the days of the Railway Station and the Derby Day; or perhaps 
Paul might have made an effort to become that which Heaven 
never meant him to be—a great painter. No; art was only a 
means of living with this man. He painted, and sold his pict¬ 
ures to his few patrons, who beat him down unmercifully, 
giving him a small profit upon his canvas and colors, for the 
encouragement of native art; but he only painted to live. 

He was waiting. From the time when he could scarcely 
speak plain Marchmont Towers had been a familiar word in his 
ears and on his lips. He knew the number of lives that stood 
between his father and the estate, and had learned to say, 
naively enough then, 

“ Oh, pa, don't you wish that Uncle Philip, and Uncle Marma- 
duke, and Cousin John would die soon ?” 

He was two-and-twenty years of age when his father died; 
and he felt a faint thrill of satisfaction, even in the midst of his 
sorrow, at the thought that there was one life the less between 
him and the end of his hopes. But other lives had sprung up 
iu the interim. There was young Arthur and little Mary; and 
Marchmont Towers was like a caravanserai in the desert, which 
seems to be further and further away as the weary traveler 
strives to reach it. 

Still Paul hoped, and watched, and waited. He bad all the 
instincts of a sybarite, and he fancied, therefore, that he was 
destined to be a rich man. He watched, and wailed, and 
hoped, and cheered his mother and sister when they were down¬ 
cast with the hope of better days. When the chance came he 
seized upon it, and plotted, and succeeded, and reveled in his 
brief success. 

But now ruin had come to him what was he to do? He tried 
to make some plan for his own conduct, but he could not. His 
brain reeled with the effort which he made to realize his own 
position. 

He walked up and down one of the pathways in the garden 
until a quarter to ten o'clock; then he went into the house, and 
waited till Mrs. Brown had departed from Stony Stringford 
Farm, attended by the boy, who carried two bundles, a .band- 
box. and a carpet-bag. 

“Come back here when you have taken those things to the 
station,” Paul said; “I shall want you.” 

He watched the dilapidated five-barred gate swing to after the 
departure of Mrs. Brown and her attendant, and then went to 
look at his horse. The patient animal had been standing in a 
shed all this time, and had neither food nor water. Paul 
searched among the empty barns and outhouses, and found a 
few handfuls of fodder. He took this to the animal, and then 
went back to the garden—to that quiet garden, where the bees 
were buzzing about in the sunshine with a drowsy, booming 
sound, and where a great tabby cat was sleeping, stretched flat 
upon its side, on one of the flower-beds. 


S48 JOHN MARCH MONT f S LEGACY. 

Paul Marchmont waited here very impatiently till the boy 
came back. 

‘‘I must see Lavinia,” he thought. “I dare not leave this 
place till I have seen Lavinia. I don’t know what may be hap¬ 
pening at Hillingsworth or Kemberling. These things are taken 
up sometimes by the populace. They may make a party against 
me; they may-” 

He stood still, gnawing the edges of his nails, and staring 
down at the gravel-walk. 

He was thiuking of things that he had read in the news¬ 
papers—cases in which some cruel mother who had ill-used her 
child, or some suspected assassin who, in all human probability, 
had poisoned his wife, had been well-nigh torn piecemeal by an 
infuriated mob, and had been glad to cling for protection to the 
officers of justice, or to beg leave to stay in prison after acquit¬ 
tal, for safe shelter from honest men and women’s indignation. 

He remembered one special case in which the populace, 
unable to get at a man’s person, tore down his house, and vented 
their fury upon unsentient bricks and mortar. 

Mr. Marchmont took out a little memorandum-book, and 
scrawled a few lines in pencil: 

“I am here, at Stony-Stringford Farm-house,’’ he wrote. 
“For God’s sake, come to me, Lavinia, and at once; you can 
drive here yourself. I want to know what has happened at 
Kemberling and at Hillingsworth. Find out everything for me, 
and come. P. M.” 

It was nearly twelve o’clock when the boy returned. Paul 
gave him this letter, and told the lad to get on his own horse, 
and ride to Kemberling as fast as he could go. He was to leave 
the horse at Kemberling, in Mr. Weston’s stable, and was to 
come back to Stony-Stringford with Mrs. Weston. This order 
Paul particularly impressed upon the boy, lest he should stop 
in Kemberling, and reveal the secret of Paul’s hiding place. 

Mr. Paul Marchmont was afraid. A terrible sickening dread 
had taken possession of him, and what little manliness there 
had ever been in his nature seemed to have deserted him to¬ 
day. 

Oh, the long, dreary hours of that miserable day! the hideous 
sunshine that scorched Mr. Marchmont s bare head as he loitered 
about the garden!—he had left his hat in the house; but he did 
not even know that he was bareheaded. Oh, the misery of that 
long day of suspense and anguish! The sick consciousness of 
utter defeat, the thought of the things that he might have done, 
the purse that he might have made with the money that he had 
lavished on pictures, and decorations, and improvements, and 
the profligate extravagance of splendid entertainments! This is 
what he thought of, and these were the thoughts that tortured 
him. But in all that miserable day he never felt one pang of 
remorse for the agonies that he had inflicted upon his innocent 
victim; on the contrary, he hated her because of this discovery, 
and gnashed his teeth as he thought how she and her young 
husband would enjoy all the grandeur of Marchmont Towers— 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 347 

all that noble revenue which he had hoped to hold till his dying 
day. 

It was growing dusk when Mr. Marclimont heard the sound 
of wheels in the dusty lane outside the garden-wall. He went 
through the house, and into the farm-yard, in time to receive 
his sister Lavinia at the gate. It was the wheels of her pony- 
carriage he had heard. She drove a pair of ponies which Paul 
had given her. He gnashed his teeth as he remembered that 
this w r as another piece of extravagance—another sum of money 
recklessly squandered, when it might have gone toward the 
making of a rich provision for this evil day. 

Mrs. Weston was very pale, and her brother could see by her 
face that she brought him no good news. She left her ponies to 
the care of the boy, and went into the garden with her brother. 

“Well, Lavinia?” 

“ Well, Paul, it is a dreadful business,” Mrs. Weston said, in 
a low voice. 

“ It’s all George’s doing! It’s all the work of that infernal 
scoundrel!” cried Paul, passionately. “ But he shall pay bitterly 
for— 

“Don’t let us talk of him; no good can come of that. What 
are you going to do ?” 

“I don’t know, I sent for you because I wanted your help 
and advice. What’s the good of your coming if you bring me 
no help ?” 

“ Don’t be cruel, Paul. Heaven knows I'll do my best. But 
I can’t see what’s to be done—except for you to get away, Paul. 
Everything’s known. Olivia stopped the marriage publicly in 
Hillingsworth Church; and all the Hillingsworth people followed 
Edward Arundel’s carriage to Kemberling. The report spread 
like wild-fire; and oh, Paul! the Kemberling people have taken 
it up and our windows have been broken, and there’s been a 
crowd all day upon the terrace at the Towers, and they’ve 
tried to get into the house, declaring that they know you’re hid¬ 
ing somewhere. Paul, Paul, what are we to do? The people 
hooted after me as I drove away from the High Street, and the 
boys threw stones at the ponies. Almost all the servants have 
left the Towers. The constables have been up there trying to 
get the crowd off the terrace. But what are we to do, Paul ? 
what are we to do ?” 

“ Kill ourselves,” answered the artist, savagely. “ What else 
should we do? What have we to live for? You have a little 
money, I suppose; I have none. Do you think I can go back to 
the old life? Do you think I can go back, and live in that 
shabby house in Charlotte Street, and paint the same rocks and 
bowlders, the same long stretch of sea, the same low lurid 
streaks of light—all the old subjects over again—for the same 
starvation prices? Do you think I can ever tolerate shabby 
clothes again, or miserable makeshift dinners—hashed mutton, 
with ill-cut hunks of lukewarm meat floating about in greasy 
slop called gravy, and washed down with flat porter fetched 
half an hour too soon from a public-house—do you think I can 
go back to that? No; I have tasted the cream of life; I have 


848 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY, 

lived; and I’ll never go back to the living death called poverty. 
Do you think I can stand in that passage in Charlotte Street 
again, Lavinia, to be bullied by an illiterate tax-gatherer, or in¬ 
sulted by an infuriated baker? No, Lavinia; I have made my 
venture, and I have failed.” 

“ But what will you do, Paul ?” 

“ I don’t know,” he answered, moodily. 

This was a lie. He knew well enough what he meant to do; 
he would kill himself. 

That resolution inspired him with a desperate kind of courage. 
He would escape from the mob; he would get away somewhere 
or other quietly, and there kill himself. He didn’t know how|as 
yet; but he would deliberate upon that point at his leisure, and 
choose the death that was supposed to be least painful. 

“ Where are my mother and Clarissa ?” he asked, presently. 

“ They are at the house; they came to me directly they heard 
the rumor of what had happened. I don’t know how they heard 
it; but every one heard of it simultaneously, as it seemed. My 
mother is in a dreadful state. I dared not tell her that I had 
known it all along.” 

“Oh, of course not,” answered Paul, with a sneer; “let me 
bear the burden of my guilt alone. What did ray mother say ?” 

“ She kept saying again and again, ‘ I can’t believe it. I can’t 
believe that he could do anything cruel; he has been such a 
good son.’ ” 

“ I was not cruel,” Paul Marchmont cried, vehemently; “ the 
girl had every comfort. I never grudged money for her com¬ 
fort. She was a miserable, apathetic creature, to whom fortune 
was almost a burden rather than an advantage. If I separated 
her from her husband—bah!—was that such a cruelty ? She 
was no worse off than if Edward Arundel had been killed in 
that railway accident; and it might have been so.” 

He didn’t waste much time by reasoning on this point. He 
thought of his mother and sisters. From first to last he had 
been a good son and a good brother. 

“What money have you, Lavinia?” 

“ A good deal; you have been very generous to me, Paul; and 
you shall have it all back again if you want it. I have got up¬ 
ward of two thousand pounds altogether; for 1 have been very 
careful of the money you have given me.” 

“ You have been wise. Now listen to me, Lavinia. I have 
been a good son, and I have borne my burden uncomplainingly. 
It is your turn now to bear yours. I must get back to March¬ 
mont Towers, if I can, and gather together whatever personal 
property I have there. It isn’t much—only a few trinkets, and 
such like. You must send me some one you can trust to fetch 
those to-night; for I shall not stay an hour in the place. I may 
not even be admitted into it; for Edward Arundel may have 
already taken possession in his wife’s name. Then you will 
have to decide where you are to go. You can’t stay in this part 
of the country. Weston must be liable to Some penalty or other 
for his share in the business, unless he’s bought over as a wit¬ 
ness to testify to the identity of Mary’s child. I haven’t time 


JOHN MARCH MONT’S LEGACY. 


to think of all this. I want you to promise me that you will 
take care of your mother and your invalid sister.” 

“ I will, Paul; I will indeed. But tell me what you are going 
to do yourself, and where you are going.” 

“ I don’t know,” Paul Marchmont answered, in the same tone 
as before; “but whatever I do I want you to give me your 
solemn promise that you will be good to my mother and sister.” 

“ I will, Paul; I promise you to do as you have done.” 

“You had better leave Kemberling by the first train to¬ 
morrow morning; take my mother and Clarissa with you; take 
everything that is worth taking, and leave Weston behind you 
to bear the brunt of this business. You can get a lodging in the 
old neighborhood, and no one will molest you when you once 
get away from this place. But remember one thing, Lavinia: 
if Mary Arundel’s child should die, and Mary herself should die 
childless, Clarissa will inherit Marchmont Towers. Don’t for¬ 
get that. There’s a chance far away, and unlikely euough; but 
it is a chance.” 

“But you are more likely to outlive Mary and her child than 
Clarissa is,” Mrs._ Weston answered, with a feeble attempt at 
hopefulness; “try and think of that, Paul, and let the hope 
cheer you.” 

“HOpel” cried Mr. Marchmont, with a discordant laugh. 
“ Yes, I am forty years old, and for five-and-thirty of those 
years I’ve hoped and waited for Marchmont Towers. I can’t 
hope any longer, or wait any longer. I give it up; I’ve fought 
hard, but I’m beaten.” 

It was nearly dark by this time, the shadowy darkness of a 
midsummer’s evening, and there were stars shining faintly out 
of the sky. 

“You can drive me back to the Towers,” Paul Marchmont 
said, “I don’t want to lose any time in getting there; I may 
be locked out by Mr. Edward Arundel if I don’t take care.” 

Mrs. Weston and her brother went back to the farm-yard. It 
was sixteen miles from Kemberling to Stony Stringford; and 
the ponies were steaming, for Lavinia had come at a good 
rate. But it was no time for the consideration of horseflesh. 
Paul took a rug from the empty seat and wrapped himself in it. 
He would not be likely to be recognized in the darkness, sitting 
back in the low seat, and made bulky by the ponderous cover¬ 
ing in which he had enveloped himself. Mrs. Weston took the 
whip from the boy, gathered up the reins, and drove off. Paul 
had left no orders about the custody of the old farm-house. The 
boy went home to his master, at the other end of the farm; and 
the night-winds wandered wherever they listed through the de¬ 
serted habitation. 


CHAPTER XLII. 

“ THERE IS CONFUSION WORSE THAN DEATH.” 

The brother and sister exchanged very few words during the 
drive between Stony Stringford and Marchmont Towers. It was 
arranged between them that Mrs. Weston should drive by a 



850 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


back way leading to a lane tbat skirted the edge of the river? 
and that Paul should get out at a gate opening into the wood, 
and by that means make his way, unobserved, to the bouse 
which had so lately been to all intents and purposes his own. 

He dared not attempt to enter the Towers by any other way; 
for the indignant populace might still be lurking about the front 
of the house, eager to inflict summary vengeance upon the per¬ 
secutor of a helpless girl. 

It was between nine and ten o’clock when Mr. Marchmont got 
out at the little gate. All here was as still as death; and Paul 
heard the croaking of the frogs upon the margin of a little pool 
in the wood, and the sound of horses’ hoofs a mile away upon 
the loose gravel by the waterside. 

“ Good-night, Lavinia,” he said. “ Send for the things as soon 
as you go back; and be sure you send a safe person for them.” 

“ Ob, yes, dear; but hadn't you better take anything of value 
yourself?” Mrs. Weston asked, anxiously. “ You say you have 
no money. Perhaps it would be best for you to send me the 
jewelry, though, and I can send you what money you want by 
my messenger.” 

“ I sha’n’t want any money—at least I have enough for what 
I want. What have you done with your savings?” 

“ They are in a London bank. But I have plenty of ready 
money in the house. You must want money, Paul?” 

“ I tell you no. I have as much as I want.” 

“ But tell me your plans, Paul; I must know your plans before 
I leave Lincolnshire myself. Are you going away ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Immediately ?’ 

“ Immediately.” 

“ Shall you go to London ?” 

“Perhaps. I don’t know yet.” 

“But when shall we see you again, Paul? or how shall we 
hear of you ?” 

“ I’ll write to you.” 

“Where?” 

“ At the post-office in Rathbone Place. Don’t bother me with 
a lot of questions to-night, Lavinia; I’m not in the humor to 
answer them.” 

Paul Marchmont turned away from his sister impatiently, 
and opened the gate; but before she bad driven off he went 
back to her. 

“Shake hands. Lavinia,” he said; “shake hands, my dear; 
it may be a long time before you and I meet again.” 

He bent down and kissed his sister. 

“ Drive home as fast as you can, and send the messenger di¬ 
rectly. He had better come to the door of the lobby, near 
Olivia’s room. Where is Olivia, by the bye ? Is she still with 
the step-daughter she loves so dearly?” 

“ No; she went to Swampington early in the afternoon. A 
fly was ordered from the Black Bull, and she went away in p/' 

“So much the better,” answered Mr. Marchmont. “ Gof'i*- 


JOHN MAliCHMONT*8 LEGACY. 


S5l 


night, Lavinia. Don’t let my mother think ill of me. I tried 
to do the best I could to make her happy. Good-bye.” 

“ Good-bye, dear Paul; God bless you!” 

The blessing was invoked with as much sincerity as if 
Lavinia Weston had been a good woman, and her brother a 
good man. Perhaps neither of those two was able to realize 
the extent of the crime which they had assisted each other to 
commit. 

Mrs. Weston drove away, and Paul went up to the back of 
the Towers, and under an archway leading into the quadrangle. 
All about the house was as quiet as if the Sleeping Beauty and 
her court had been its only occupants. 

The inhabitants of Kemberling and the neighborhood were an 
orderly people, who burnt few candles between May and Sep¬ 
tember; and however much they might have desired to avenge 
Mary Arundel’s wrongs by tearing Paul Marchmont to pieces, 
their patience had been exhausted by nightfall, and they had 
been glad to return to their respective abodes to discuss Paul’s 
iniquities comfortably over the nine o’clock beer. 

Paul stood still in the quadrangle for a few moments, and 
listened. He could hear no human breath or whisper; he only 
heard the sound of the corn-crake in the fields to. the right of the 
Towers, and the distant rumbling of wagon-wheels on the high¬ 
road. There was a glimmer of light in one of the windows be¬ 
longing to the servants’ offices—only one dim glimmer, where 
there bad usually been a row of brilliantly-lighted casements. 
Lavinia was right, then; almost all the servants had left the 
Towers. Paul tried to open the half-glass door leading into the 
lobby; but it was locked. He rang a bell; and after about three 
minutes’ delay a buxom country-girl appeared in the lobby 
carrying a candle. She was some kitchen-maid, 01 dairy-maid, 
or scullery-maid, whom Paul could not remember to have ever 
seen until now. She opened the door and admitted him, drop¬ 
ping a courtesy as he passed her. There was some relief even in 
this. Mr. Marchmont had scarcely expected to get into the 
house at all; still less to be received with common civility by 
any of the servants, who had so lately obeyed him and fawned 

upon him. , , 

“ Where are all the rest of the servants ? he asked. 

“They’re all gone, sir; except him as you brought down trom 
London—Mr. Peterson—and me and mother. Mother’s in the 
laundry, sir; and I’m scullery-maid.” 

“ Why did the other servants leave the place t 

“ Mostly because they was afraid of the mob upon the terrace, 
I think, sir; for there’s been people all the afternoon throwm 
stones and breakin’ the windows; and I don it think as there s a 
whole pane of glass in the front of the house, sir; and Mr. 
Gormby, sir, he come about four o’clock, and he got the people 
to go away, sir, by tellin’ ’em as it warn’t your property, sir, but 
the young^ lady’s, Miss Mary Marchmont—leastways, Mrs. Am¬ 
end Jle-fs they was destroyin’ of; but most of the servanits had 
gone before that, sir, except Mr. Peterson; and ^'^nd^iet 
give orders as me and mother was to lock all the doors, and let 


JOHN MARCH MO NTS LEGACY. 


no one in upon no account whatever; and lie’s coming to-mor¬ 
row mornin’ to take possession, he says; and please, sir, you 
can’t come in; for his special orders to me and mother was, no 
one, and you in particklar.” 

“Nonsense, girl!” exclaimed Mr. Marchmont, decisively; 
“ who is Mr. Gormby, that he should give orders as to who 
comes in or stops out ? I’m only coming in for half an hour, to 
pack my portmanteau. Where’s Peterson?” 

“ In the dinin’-room, sir; but please, sir, you mustn’t-” 

The girl made »a feeble effort to intercept Mr. Marchmont, in 
accordance with the steward’s special orders; which were that 
Paul should, upon no pretense whatever, be suffered to enter 
that house. But the artist snatched the candlestick from her 
hand, and went away toward the dining-room, leaving her to 
stare after him in stupid amazement. 

Paul found his valet Peterson, taking what he called a snack, 
in the dining-room. A cloth was spread upon the corner of the 
table; and there was a fore-quarter of cold roast lamb, a bottle 
of French brandy, and a decanter half full of Madeira before 
the valet. 

He started as his master entered the room, and looked up, not 
very respectfully, but with no unfriendly glance. 

“ Give me half a tumbler of that brandy, Peterson,” said Mr. 
Marchmont. 

The man obeyed; and Paul drained the fiery spirit as if it had 
been so much water. It was four-and-twenty hours since meat 
or drink had crossed his dry, white lips. 

“ Why didn’t you go away with the rest ?” he asked, as be set 
down the empty glass. 

“ It’s only rats, sir, that run away from a falling house. 
I stopped, thinkin’ you’d be goin’ away somewhere, and that 
you’d want me.” 

The solid and unvarnished truth of the matter was that Peter¬ 
son had taken it for granted that his master had made an ex¬ 
cellent purse against this evil day, and would be ready to start 
for the Continent or America, there to lead a pleasant life upon 
the proceed? of his iniquity. The valet never imagined his 
master guilty of such besotted folly as to leave himself wipre- 
pared for this catastrophe. 

“I thought you might still want me, sir,” he said; “and 
wherever you’re going, I’m quite ready to go, too. You’ve 
been a good master to me, sir; and I don’t want to leave a good 
master because things go against him.” 

Paul Marchmont shook his head, and held out the empty 
tumbler for his servant to pour more brandy into it. 

“ I am going away,” he said; “ but I want no servant where 
I’m going; but I’m grateful to you for your offer, Peterson. 
Will you come up-stairs with me? I want to pack a few 
things.” 

“They’re all packed, sir. I knew you’d be leaving, and I’ve 
packed everything.” 

“ My dressing-case ?” 

“ Yes, sir. You’ve got the key of that.” 


JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 


353 


“ Yes; I know, I know.” 

Paul Marchmonfc was silent for a few minutes, thinking. 
Everything that he had in the way of personal property of any 
value was in the dressing-case of which he had spoken. There 
was five or six hundred pounds’ worth of jewelry in Mr. March- 
mont’s dressing-case; for the first instinct of the nouveau riche 
exhibits itself in diamond shirt studs; cameo rings; malachite 
death’s heads with emerald eyes; grotesque and pleasing charms 
in the form of coffins, coal-scuttles, and hob-nailed boots; fan¬ 
tastical lockets of ruby and enamel; wonderful bands of mas¬ 
sive yellow gold, studded with diamonds, wherein to insert the 
two ends of flimsy lace cravats. Mr. Marchmont reflected upon 
the amount of his possessions, and their security in the jewel 
drawer of his dressing-case. The dressing-case was furnished 
with a Chubb’s lock, the key of which he carried in his waist¬ 
coat pocket. Yes, it was all safe. 

“Look here, Peterson,” said Paul Marchmont; “I think I 
shall sleep at Mrs. Weston’s to-night. I should like you to take 
my dressing-case down there at once.” 

“ And how about the other luggage, sir—the portmanteaus 
and hat-boxes?” 

“ Never mind those. I want you to put the dressing-case 
safe in my sister’s hands. I can send here for the rest to-mor¬ 
row morning. You needn’t wait for me now. I’ll follow you 
in half an hour.” 

“ Yes, sir. You want the dressing-case carried to Mrs. Wes¬ 
ton’s house, and I’m to wait for you there ?” 

“ Yes; you can wait for me.” 

“ But is there nothing else I can do, sir ?” 

“Nothing whatever. I’ve only got to collect a few papers, 
and then I shall follow you.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

The discreet Peterson bowed, and retired to fetch the dressing- 
case. He put his own construction upon Mr. Marchmont’s 
evident desire to get rid of him, and to be left alone at the 
Towers. Paul had, of course, made a purse, and had doubtless 
put bis money away in some very artful hiding-place, whence 
he now wanted to take it at his leisure. He had stuffed one of 
his pillows with bank-notes, perhaps; or had hidden a cash-box 
behind the tapestry in his bed-cbamber; or had buried a bag of 
gold in the flower-garden below the terrace. Mr. Peterson went 
up-stairs to Paul’s dressing-room, put his hand through the strap 
of the dressing-case, which was very heavy, went down stairs 
again, met his master in the hall, and went out at the lobby- 
door. 

Paul locked the door upon his valet, and then went back into 
the lonely house, where the ticking of the clocks in the tenant¬ 
less rooms sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness. All the 
windows had been broken; and though the shutters were shut, 
the cold night-air blew in at many a crack and cranny, and well- 
nigh extinguished Mr. Marchmont’s candle as he went from 
room to room looking about him. 

He went into the western drawing-room, and lighted some of 


354 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


the lamps in the principal chandelier. The shutters were shut, 
for the windows here, as well as elsewhere, had been broken; 
fragments of shivered glass, great, jagged stones, and handfuls 
of gravel, lay about upon the rich carpet—the velvet-pile which 
he had chosen with such artistic taste, such careful deliberation. 
He lit the lamps and walked about the room, looking for the 
last time at his treasures. Yes, Ms treasures. It was he who 
had transformed this chamber from a prim, old-fashioned 
sitting-room, with quaint, japanned cabinets, and shabby, 
chintz-cushioned cane chairs, cracked Indian vases, and a faded 
carpet, into a saloon that would have been no discredit to 
Buckingham Palace or Alton Towers. 

It was he who had made the place what it was. He had squan¬ 
dered the savings of Mary’s minority upon pictures that the rich¬ 
est collector in England might have been proud to own; upon 
porcelain that would have been worthy of a place in the Vienna 
Museum or the Bernal Collection. He had done this, and these 
things were to pass into the possession of the man he hated— 
the fiery young soldier who had horsewhipped him before the 
face of wondering Lincolnshire. He walked about the room, 
thinking of his life since he had come into possession of this 
place, and of what it had been before that time, and what it must 
be again, unless he summoned up a desperate courage—and 
killed himself. 

His heart beat fast and loud, and he felt an icy chill creeping 
slowly through his every vein as he thought of this. How 
was he to kill himself ? He had no poison in his possession—no 
deadly drug that would reduce the agony of death to the space 
of a lightning’s flash. There were pistols, rare gems of choicest 
workmanship, in one of the buhl-cabinets in that very room; 
there was a fowling-piece and ammunition in Mr. Marchmont’s 
dressing-room; but the artist was not expert with the use of fire¬ 
arms, and he might fail in the attempt to blow out his brains, 
and only maim or disfigure himself hideously. There was the 
river—the slow, black river; but, then, drowning is a slow death, 
and Heaven only knows how long the agony may seem to the 
wretch who endures it! Alas! the ghastly truth of the matter 
is, that Mr. Marchmont was afraid of death. Look at the King 
of Terrors how he would, he could not discover any pleasing as¬ 
pect under which he could meet the grim monarch without 
flinching. 

He looked at life; but if life was less terrible than death, it 
was not less dreary. He looked forward with a shudder to see 
—what? Humiliation, disgrace, perhaps punishment—life-long 
transportation, it may be; for this base conspiracy might be a 
criminal offense, amenable to criminal law. Or, escaping all 
this, what, was there for him ? What was there for this man 
even then ? For forty years he had been steeped to the lips in 
poverty, and had endured his life. He looked back now and 
wondered how it was that he had been patient; he wondered 
why he bad not made an end of himself and his obscure trouble 
twenty years before this night. But after looking back a little 
longer, he saw the star which had illumined the darkness of 


JOHN MABCHMONT'S LEGACY. 855 

that miserable and sordid existence, and he understood the rea¬ 
son of his endurance. He had hoped. Day after day he had 
got up to go through the same troubles, to endure the same hu 
miliations; but every day, when his life had been hardest to 
him, he had said, “ To-morrow I may be master of Marchmont 
Towers.” But he could never hope this any more; he could not 
go back to watch and wait again, beguiled by the faint hope 
that Mary Arundel’s son might die, and to hear by and by that 
other children were born to her to widen the great gulf betwixt 
him and fortune. 

He looked back, and he saw that he had lived from day to 
day, from year to year, lured on by this one hope. He looked 
forward, and he saw that he could not live without it. 

There had never been but this one road to good fortune open 
to him. He was a clever man, but his was not the cleverness 
which can transmute itself into solid cash. He could only paint 
indifferent pictures; and he had existed long enough by picture¬ 
painting to realize the utter hopelessness of success in that 
career. 

He had borne his life while he was in it, but he could not 
bear to go back to it. He had been out of it, and had tasted 
another phase of existence; and he could see it all now plainly, 
as if he had been a spectator sitting in the boxes and watching 
a dreary play performed upon a stage before him. The per¬ 
formers in the remotest provincial theater believe in the play 
they are acting. The omnipotence of passion creates dewy 
groves and moonlit atmospheres, ducal robes and beautiful 
women. But the metropolitan spectator, in whose mind the 
memory of better things is still fresh, sees'that moonlit trees 
are poor distemper daubs, pushed on by dirty carpenters, and 
the moon a green bottle borrowed from a druggist’s shop; the 
ducal robes, cotton velvet and tarnished tinsel; and the heroine 
of the drama old and ugly. 

So Paul looked at the life he had endured, and wondered as 
he saw how horrible it was. 

He could see the shabby lodging, the faded furniture, the 
miserable handful of fire struggling with the smoke in a shallow 
grate, that had been half blocked up with bricks by some for¬ 
mer tenant as badly off as himself. He could look back at that 
dismal room, with the ugly paper on the walls, the scanty cur¬ 
tains flapping in the wind that they pretended to shut out; the 
figure of his mother sitting near the fireplace, with that pale, 
anxious face, which was a perpetual complaint against hardship 
and discomfort. He could see his sister, standing at the window 
in the dusky twilight, patching up some worn-out garment, and 
straining her eyes for the sake of economizing in the matter of 
half an inch of candle. And the street below the window—the 
shabby-genteel street, with a dingy shop breaking out here and 
there, and children playing on the door-steps, and a muffin-bell 
jingling through the evening fog, and a melancholy Italian 
grinding “ Home, sweet Home!” in the patch of lighted road 
opposite the pawnbroker’s. He saw it all; and it was ail alike 
sordid, miserable, hopeless. 


m 


JOHN MAROHMONT*S LEGACY, 


Paul Marcbmont had never sunk so low as his Cousin John. 
He had never descended so far in the social scale as to carry a 
banner at Drury Lane, or to live in one room in Oakley Street, 
Lambeth. But there had been times when to pay the rent 
of three rooms had been next kin to an impossibility to the 
artist, and when the honorarium of a shilling a night would have 
been very acceptable to him. He had drained the cup of pov¬ 
erty to the dregs, and now the cup was filled again, and the bit¬ 
ter draught was offered to him. 

He must drink that or another potion—a sleeping-draught, 
which is commonly called Death. He must die! But how ? 
His coward heart sank as the horrible alternative pressed 
closer upon him. He must die—to-night—at once—in that 
house; so that when they came in the morning to eject him, 
they would have little trouble; they would only have to carry 
out a corpse. 

He walked up and down the room, biting his finger-nails to 
the quick, but coming to no resolution, until he was interrupted 
by the ringing of the bell at the lobby-door. It was the mes¬ 
senger from his sister, no doubt. Paul drew his watch from his 
waistcoat pocket, unfastened his chain, took a set of gold studs 
from the breast of his shirt, and a signet-ring from his finger; 
then he sat down at a writing-table, and packed the watch and 
chain, the studs and signet-ring, and a bunch of keys in a large 
envelope. He sealed this packet, and addressed it to his sister: 
then he took a candle and went to the lobby. Mrs. Weston had 
sent a young man who was an assistant and pupil of her hus¬ 
band’s—a good-tempered young fellow, who willingly served 
her m her hour of trouble. Paul gave this young man the key 
of his dressing-case and the packet. 

“ You will be sure and put that in my sister’s hands,” he said. 

“ Oh, yes, sir. Mrs. Weston gave me this letter for you, sir. 
Am I to wait for an answer ?” 

“No; there will be no answer. Good-night.” 

“ Good-night, sir.” 

The young man went away, and Paul Marehmont heard him 
whistle a popular melody as he walked along the cloistered way 
and out of the quadrangle by a low archway commonly used by 
the trades-people who came to the Towers. 

The artist stood and listened to the young man’s departing 
footsteps. Then, with a horrible thrill of anguish, he remem¬ 
bered that he had seen his last of human kind; he had heard his 
last of human voices: for he was to kill himself that night. He 
stood in the dark lobby, looking out into the quadrangle. He 
was quite alone in the house; for the girl who had let him in 
was in the laundry with her mother. He could see the figures 
of the two women moving about in a great gas-lit chamber 
upon the other side of the quadrangle—a building which had 
no communication with the rest of the house. He was to die 
that night; and he had not yet even determined how he was to 
die. 

He mechanically opened Mrs. Weston’s letter. It was only a 
few lines, telling him that Peterson had arrived with the port- 


JOHN MARCH MONTS LEGACY. 357 

manteau and dressing-case, and that there would be a comfort¬ 
able room prepared for Mr. Marchmont. “ I am so glad vou 
have changed your mind, and are coming to me, Paul,” Mrs. 
Weston concluded. “Your manner when we parted to-night 
almost alarmed me.” 

Paul groaned aloud as he crushed the letter in his hand. 
Then he went back to the western drawing-room. He heard 
strange voices in the empty rooms as he passed by their open 
doors, weird, creaking sounds, and melancholy moanings in 
the wide chimneys. It seemed as if all the ghosts of March- 
mont Towers were astir to-night, moved by an awful prescience 
of some coming horror. 

Paul Marchmont was an atheist; but atheism, although a very 
pleasing theme for a critical and argumentative discussion after 
a lobster supper and unlimited champagne, is but a poor staff to 
lean upon when the worn-out traveler approaches the mysterious 
portals of the unknown land. 

The artist had boasted of his belief in annihilation, and had de¬ 
clared himself perfectly satisfied with a materialistic or panthe¬ 
istic arrangement of the universe, and very indifferent as to 
whether he cropped up in future years as a summer-cabbage or 
a new Raphael, so long as the ten stone or so of matter of which 
he was composed was made use of somehow or other, and did 
its duty in the great scheme of a scientific universe. But oh I 
how that empty, soulless creed slipped away from him now, 
when he stood alone in this tenantless house, shuddering at 
strange spirit noises, and horrified by a host of mystic fears— 
gigantic, shapeless terrors—that crowded in his empty, godless 
mind, and filled it with their hideous presence! 

He had refused to believe in a personal God. He had laughed 
at the idea that there was any deity to whom the individual can 
appeal in his hour of grief or trouble, with the hope of any 
separate mercy, any special grace. He had rejected the 
Christian’s simple creed, and now—now that he had floated 
away from the shores of life, and felt himself borne upon an 
irresistible current to that mysterious other side, what did he not 
believe in ? 

Everv superstition that has ever disturbed the soul of ignorant 
man lent some one awful feature to that crowd of hideous im¬ 
ages uprising in this man’s mind. Awful Chaldean gods and 
Carthaginian goddesses, thirsting for the hot blood of human 
sacrifices, greedy for hecatombs of children flung shrieking into 
fiery furnaces, or torn limb from limb by savage beasts; Baby¬ 
lonian abomination; Egyptian Isis and Osiris; classical divini¬ 
ties, with flaming swords and pale, impassible faces, rigid as the 
Destiny whose type they were; ghastly Germanic demons and 
witches—all the dread avengers that man, in the knowledge of 
his own wickedness, has ever shadowed for himself out of the 
darkness of his ignorant mind, swelled that ghastly crowd, until 
the artist’s brain reeled, and he was fain to sit with his head in 
his hands, trying, by a great effort of the will, to exorcise thQS© 
loathsome phantoms. 


358 JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY. 

“ I must be going mad,” he muttered to himself. “ I am going 
mad.” 

But still the great question was unanswered. How was be to 
kill himself? 

'‘I must settle that,” he thought. “ I dare not think of any¬ 
thing that may come afterward. Besides, what should come? 
I know that there is nothing. Haven’t I heard it demonstrated 
by cleverer men than I am ? Haven’t I looked at it in every 
light, and weighed it in every scale—always with the same re¬ 
sult? Yes; I know that there is nothing after the one short 
pang, any more than there is pain in the nerve of a tooth when 
the tooth is gone. The nerve was the soul of the tooth, I sup¬ 
pose; but wrench away the body, and the soul is dead. Why 
should I be afraid? One short pain—it will seem long, I dare 
say—and then I shall lie still forever and ever, and melt slowly 
back into the elements out of which I was created. Yes; I shall 
lie still—and be nothing .” 

Paul Marchmont sat thinking of this for a long time. Was 
it such a great advantage, after all, this annihilation, the 
sovereign good of the atheist’s barren creed ? It seemed to¬ 
night to this man as if it would be better to be anything, to 
suffer any anguish, any penalty for his sins, than to be blotted 
out forever and ever from any conscions part in the grand har¬ 
mony of the universe. If he could have believed in that Roman 
Catholic doctrine of purgatory, and that after cycles of years of 
suffering he might rise at last, purified from his sins, worthy to 
dwell among the angels, how differently would death have 
appeared to him I He might have gone away to hide himself in 
some foreign city, to perform patient daily sacrifices, humble 
acts of self-abnegation, every one of which should be a new 
figure, however small a one, to be set against the great sum of 
his sin. 

But he could not believe. There is a vulgar proverb which 
says, “ You canuot have your loaf and eat it;” or, if proverbs 
would only be grammatical it might be better worded, “ You 
cannot eat your loaf, and have it to eat on some future occa¬ 
sion.” Neither can you indulge in rationalistic discussions or 
epigrammatic pleasantry about the great Creator who made 
you and then turn to Him in the dreadful hour of your despair: 
“ O my God, whom I have insulted and offended, help the mis¬ 
erable wretch who for twenty years has obstinately shut his 
heart against Thee!” It may be that God would forgive and 
hear even at that last supreme moment, as He heard the peni¬ 
tent thief upon the cross: but the penitent thief had been a sin¬ 
ner, not an unbeliever, and he could pray. The hard heart of 
the atheist freezes in his breast when he would repent and put 
away his iniquities. When he would fain turn to his offended 
Maker, the words that he tries to speak die away upon his lips; 
for the habit of blasphemy is too strong upon him; he can blague 
upon all the mighty mysteries of heaven and hell, but he cannot 
pray. 

Paul Marchmont Coiild not fashion a prayer. Horrible witti¬ 
cisms arose up between him and the words he would have spoken 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 


359 


—ghastly bon mots , that had seemed so brilliant at a lamplit 
dinner-table, spoken to a joyous accompaniment of champagne 
corks and laughter. Ah me! the world was behind this man 
now, with all its pleasures; and he looked back upon it, and 
thought that, even when it seemed gayest and brightest, it was 
only like a great roaring fair, with flaring lights, and noisy 
showmen clamoring forever to a struggling crowd. 

How should he die! should he go up-stairs and cut his 
throat? 

He stood before one of his pictures—a pet picture, a girl’s face 
by Millais, looking through the moonlight, fantastically beauti¬ 
ful. He stood before this picture, and he felt one small separate 
pang amidst all his misery as he remembered that Edward and 
Mary Arundel were now possessors of this particular gem. 

“ They sha’n't have it,” he muttered to himself; “ they sha’n’t 
have this, at any rate.” 

He took the penknife from his pocket, and ripped the canvas 
across and across savagely, till it bung in ribbons from the 
deep-gilded frame. 

Then he smiled to himself, for the first time since he had en¬ 
tered that house, and his eyes flashed with a sudden light. 

“ I have lived like Sardanapalus for the last year,” he cried 
aloud, “and I will die like Sardanapalus!” 

There was a fragile piece of furniture near him—an etagere, 
of marquetry work, loaded with costly bric-a-brac. Oriental 
porcelain, Sevres and Dresden, old Chelsea and Crown Derby 
cups and saucers, and quaint tea-pots, crawling vermin in Pal- 
lissy ware, Indian monstrosities, and all manner of expensive 
absurdities, heaped together in artistic confusion. Paul March- 
mont struck the slim leg of the etagere with his foot, and 
laughed aloud as the fragile toys fell into a ruined heap upon 
the carpet. He stamped upon the broken china, and the frail 
cups and saucers crackled like egg-shells under his savage feet. 

“ I will die like Sardanapalus!” he cried; “the King Arbaces 
shall never rest in the palace I have beautified. 

“ 4 Now order here 

Fagots, pine-nuts, and wither’d leaves, and such 
Things as catch fire with one sole spark; 

Bring cedar, too, and precious drugs, and spices 
And mighty planks, to nourish a tall pile; 

Bring frankincense and myrrh, too; for it Is 
For a great sacrifice I build the pyre.’ 

I don t think much of your blank verse, George Gordon Noel 
Byron. Your lines end on lame syllables, your ten-syllable 
blank verse lacks the fiery ring of your rhymes. I wonder 
whether Marchmont Towers is insured ? Yes, 1 remember pay¬ 
ing a premium last Christmas. They may have a sharp tussle 
with the insurance companies, though. Yes, I will die like 
Sardanapalus— no, not like him, for I have no Myrrlia to mount 
the pile, and cling about me to the last. Pshaw! a modern 
Myrrh a would leave Sardanapalus to perish alone, and be off to 
make herself safe with the new king.” 

Paul snatched up the candle* and went out into the hall. His 


360 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. 


gray eyes had a strange light in them. His manner had that 
feverish excitement which the French call exaltation. He 
ran up the broad stairs leading to the long corridor, out of 
which his own rooms, and his mother’s and sister’s rooms 
opened. 

Ah, how pretty they were! How elegant he had made them 
in his reckless disregard of expense, his artistic delight in the 
task of beautification! There were no shutters here, and the 
summer breeze blew in through the broken windows, and 
stirred the gauzy muslin curtains, the gay chintz draperies, the 
cloud-like festoons of silk and lace. Paul Marchmont went 
from room to room with the flaring candle in his hand, and 
wherever there were curtains or draperies about the windows, 
the beds, the dressing-tables, the low lounging-chairs, and cozy 
little sofas, he set a light to them. He did this with wonderful 
rapidity, leaving flames behind him as he traversed the long 
corridor, and coming back thus to the stairs. He went 
down-stairs again; and returned to the western drawing-room. 
Then he blew out his candle, turned out the gas, and 
waited. 

“ How soon will it come ?*’ he thought. 

The shutters were shut, and the room was quite dark. 

Shall I ever have courage to stop till it comes ?” Paul 
Marchmont thought. 

He groped his way to the door, double locked it, and then 
took the key from the lock. 

He went to one of the windows, clambered upon a chair, 
opened one of the top shutters, and flung the key out through 
the broken window. He heard it strike jingling upon the 
stone terrace, and then bound away Heaven knows where. 

“I sha’n’t be able to go out by the door, at any rate,’’ he 
thought. 

It was quite dark in the room, but outside it was light as 
day. Mr. Marchmont went away from the window, feeling 
his way among the chairs and tables. He could see the red 
light through the crevices of the shutters, and a lurid patch of 
sky through that one window, the upper half of which he had 
left open. He sat down, somewhere near the center of the 
room, and waited. 

“ The smoke will kill me,” he thought. “ I shall know noth¬ 
ing of the fire.” 

He sat quite still. He had trembled violently while he had 
gone from room to room doing bis horrible work; but his nerves 
seemed steadier now. Steadier! why, he w*as transformed to 
stone! His heart seemed to have stopped beating; and he only 
knew by a sick anguish, a dull aching pain, that it was still in 
his breast. 

He sat waiting and thinking. In that time all the long story 
of the past was acted before him, and he saw what a wretch he 
had been. I do not know whether this was penitence; but 
looking at that enacted story, Paul Marchmont thought that his 
own part in the play was a mistake, and that it was a foolish 
thing to be a villain. 


JOHN MAHCIIMONT'S LEGACY. 


861 


When a great flock of frightened people, with a fire-engine 
out of order, and drawn by whooping men and boys, came 
hurrying up to the Towers, they found a blazing edifice, which 
looked like an enchanted castle—great, stone-framed windows 
vomiting flame; tall chimneys toppling down upon a fiery roof; 
molten lead, like water turned to fire, streaming in flaming 
cataracts upon the terrace; and all the sky lit up by that vast pile 
of blazing ruin. Only salamanders, or poor Mr. Braidwood’s 
own chosen band, could have approached Marchmont Towers 
that night. The Kemberling firemen and the Swampington 
firemen, who came by and by, were neither salamanders nor 
Braidwoods. They stood aloof and squirted water at the 
flames, and recoiled aghast by and by when the roof came down 
like an avalanche of blazing timber, leaving only a gaunt, gi¬ 
gantic skeleton of red-hot stone where Marchmont Towers once 
had been. 

******* 

When it was safe to venture in among its ruins—and this was 
not for many hours after the fire had burnt itself out—people 
looked for Paul Marchmont; but amidst all that vast chaos of 
smoldering ashes there was nothing found that could be identi¬ 
fied as the remains of a human being. No one knew where 
the artist had been at the time of the fire, or indeed whether he 
had been in the house at all; and the popular opinion was, that 
Paul had set fire to the mansion, and had fled away before the 
flames began to spread. 

But Lavinia Weston knew better than this. She knew now 
why her brother had sent her every scrap of valuable property 
belonging to him. She understood now why be had come back 
to her to bid her good-night for the second time, and press his 
cold lips to hers. 


CHAPTER THE LAST. 

“ dear is the memory of our wedded lives.” 

Mary and Edward Arundel saw the awful light in the sky, 
and heard the voices of the people shouting in the street below, 
and calling to one another that Marchmont Towers was on fire. 

The young mistress of the burning pile had very little concern 
for her property. She only kept saying, again and again, “ Oh, 
Edward, I hope there is no one in the house. God grant there 
may be no one in the house!” 

And when the flames were highest, and it seemed by the 
light in the sky as if all Lincolnshire had been blazing, Edward 
Arundel’s wife flung herself upon her knees, and prayed aloud 
for any unhappy creature that might be in peril. 

Oh, If we could dare to think that this innocent girl’s prayer 
was heard before the throne of an awful Judge, pleading for the 
soul of a wicked man! 

Early the next morning Mrs. Arundel came from Lawford 
Grange with her confidential maid, and carried off her daugh¬ 
ter-in-law and the baby on the first stage of the journey into 
pevonshire, Before she left Kemberling Mary was told that no 



862 JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEG ACT. 

dead body had been found among the mins of the Towers; and 
this assertion deluded her into the belief that no unhappy creat¬ 
ure had perished. So she went to Dangerfield happier than she 
had ever been since the sunny days of her honeymoon, to wait 
there for the coming of Edward Arundel, who was to stay be¬ 
hind to see Richard Paulette and Mr. Gormby, and to secure the 
testimony of Mr. "Weston and Betsy Murrel with a view to the 
identification of Mary’s little son, who had been neither regis¬ 
tered nor christened. 

I have no need to dwell upon this process of identification, 
registration, and christening through which Master Edward 
Arundel had to pass in the course of the next month. I had 
rather skip this dry-as-dust business, and go on to that happy 
time which Edward and his young wife spent together under 
the oaks at Dangerfield; that bright second honeymoon season, 
while they were as yet houseless; for a pretty villa-like man¬ 
sion was being built on the Marchmont property, far away from 
the dank wood and the dismal river, in a pretty pastoral little 
nook, which was a fair oasis amidst the general dreariness of 
Lincolnshire. 

I need scarcely say that the grand feature of this happy time 
was the Baby. It will be of course easily understood that this 
child stood alone among babies. There never had been another 
such infant; it was more than probable there would never again 
be such a one. In every attribute of boyhood he was a twelve- 
month in advance of the rest of his race. Prospective greatness 
was stamped upon his brow. He would be a Clive or a Welling¬ 
ton, unless indeed he should have a fancy for the Bar, and the 
Woolsack, in which case he would be a little more erudite than 
Lyndhurst, a trifle more eloquent than Brougham. All this was 
palpable to the meanest capacity in the very manner in which 
this child crowed in his nurse’s arms, or choked himself with 
farinaceous food, or smiled recognition at his young father, or 
performed the simplest act common to infancy. 

I think Mr. Sant would have been pleased to paint one of those 
summer scenes at Dangerfield. The proud soldier-father; the 
pale young wife; the handsome, matronly grandmother; and, as 
the mystic center of that magic circle, the toddling, flaxen¬ 
haired baby held up by his father’s hands, and taking caricature 
strides in imitation of papa’s big steps. 

To my mind, it is a great pity that children are not children 
forever—that the pretty baby-boy by Sant, all rosy, and flaxen, 
and blue-eyed, should ever grow into a great, angular, pre- 
Raphaelite hobadaboy, horribly big and out of drawing. But 
neither Edward, nor Mary, nor above all, Mrs. Arundel, were 
of this opinion. They were as eager for the child to grow up 
and enter for the great races of this life, as some speculative turf 
magnate who has given a fancy price for a yearling, and is 
pining to see the animal a far-famed three-year-old, and winner 
of the double event. 

Before the child had cut a double-tooth Mrs. Arundel, senior, 
had decided in favor of Eton as opposed to Harrow, and was 
balancing the conflicting advantages of classical Oxford and 


JOm MARCHMONT'S LEGACY. m 

mathematical Cambridge; while Edward could not see the baby- 
boy rolling on the grass, with blue ribbons and sashes fluttering 
in the breeze, without thinking of his son’s future appearance in 
the uniform of his own regiment, gorgeous in the splendid crash 
of a levee at St. James’. 

How many airy castles were erected in that happy time, with 
the baby for the foundation-stone of all of them! The Baby! 
Why, that definite article alone expresses an infinity of foolish 
love and admiration. Nobody says the father, the husband, the 
mother. It is “my” father, my husband, as the case may be. 
But every baby, from St. Giles’ to Belgravia, from Tyburnia to 
St. Luke’s, is “the” baby. The infant’s reign is short, but his 
royalty is supreme, and no one presumes to question his des¬ 
potic rule. 

Edward Arundel almost worshiped the little child whose 
feeble cry he had heard in the October twilight, and had not 
recognized. He was never tired of reproaching himself for 
this omission. That baby-voice ought to have awakened a 
strange thrill in the young father’s breast. 

That time at Dangerfield was the happiest period of Mary’s 
life. All her sorrows had melted away. They did not tell her 
of Paul Marchmont’s suspected fate; they only'told her that her 
enemy had disappeared, and that no one knew whither he had 
gone. Mary asked once, and once only, about her step-mother, 
and she was told that Olivia was at Swampington Rectory, 
living with her father; and that people said she was mad. 
George Weston had emigrated to Australia with his wife and 
his wife’s mother and sister. There had been no prosecution 
for conspiracy; the disappearance of the principal criminal had 
rendered that unnecessary. 

This was all that Mary ever heard of her persecutors. She did 
not wish to hear of them. She had forgiven them long ago. I 
think that, in the inner depths of her innocent heart, she had 
forgiven them from the moment she had fallen on her husband’s 
breast in Hester’s parlor at Kemberling, and had felt his strong 
arms clasped about her, sheltering her from all harm for ever¬ 
more. 

She was very happy; and her nature, always gentle, seemed 
sublimated by the sufferings she had endured, and already akin 
to that of the angels. Alas, this was Edward Arundel’s chief 
sorrow! This young wife, so precious to him in her fading 
loveliness, was slipping away from him, even in the hour when 
they were happiest together; was separated from him even when 
they were most united. She was separated from him by that 
unconquerable sadness in his heart which was prophetic of a 
great sorrow to come. 

Sometimes, when Mary saw her husband looking at her with 
a mournful tenderness, an almost despairing love in his eyes, she 
would throw herself into his arms, and say: 

“ You must remember how happy I have been, Edward. Oh, 
my darling! promise me always to remember how happy I have 
been.” 

When the first chill breezes of autumn blew among the Dan* 


JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY, 


§64 

gerfield oaks Edward Arundel took his wife southward with 
his mother and the inevitable baby in her train. They went to 
Nice, and they were very quiet, very happy, in the pretty 
southern town, with snow-clad mountains behind them, and the 
purple Mediterranean before. 

The villa was building all this time in Lincolnshire. Ed¬ 
ward’s agent sent him plans and sketches for Mrs. Arundel’s 
approval; and every evening there was some fresh talk about 
the arrangement of the rooms, and the laying out of gardens. 
Mary was always pleased to see the plans and drawings, and to 
discuss the progress of the work with her husband. She would 
talk of the billiard-room, and the cozy little smoking-room, and 
the nurseries for the baby, which were to have a southern 
aspect, and every advantage calculated to assist the develop¬ 
ment of that rare and marvelous blossom; and she would plan 
the comfortable apartments that were to be specially kept for 
dear grandmamma, who would of course spend a great deal of 
her time at the Sycamores—the new place was to be called the 
Sycamores. But Edward could never get his wife to talk of a 
certain boudoir opening into a tiny conservatory, which he him¬ 
self had added on to the original architect’s plan. He could 
never get Mary to speak of this particular chamber; and once, 
when he asked her some question about the color of the draper¬ 
ies, she said to him very gently: 

“I would rather you would not think of that room, darling.” 

“ Why, my pet ?” 

“Because it will make you sorry afterward.” 

“Mary, my darling-” 

“Ob, Edward! you know—you must know, dearest—that I 
shall never see that place.” 

But her husband took her in his arms, and declared that this 
was only a morbid fancy, and that she was getting better and 
stronger every day, and would live to see her grandchildren 
playing under the maples that sheltered the northern side of 
the new villa. Edward told his wife this, and he believed in 
the truth of what he said. He could not believe that he was to 
lose his young wife, restored to him after so many trials. Mary 
did not contradict him just then; but that night, when he was 
sitting in her room reading by the light of a shaded lamp after 
she had gone to bed—Mary went to bed very early, by order of 
the doctors, and indeed lived altogether according to medical 
regime —she called her husband to her. 

“ 1 want to speak to you, dear,” she said; “there is some¬ 
thing that I must say to you.” 

The young man knelt down by his wife’s bed. 

“ What is it, darling ?” he asked. 

“ You know what we said to-day, Edward ?” 

“What, darling? We say so many things every day—we are 
so happy together, and have so much to talk about.” 

“ But you remember, Edward—you remember what I said 
about never seeing the Sycamores? Ah, don’t stop me, dear 
love,” Mary said, reproachfully, for Edward put his lips to hers 
to stay the current of mournful words; “ don’t stop me, dear, 

I 


JOHN MARCH MONT'S LEGACY. 865 

^ m } 1 s P ea ^ to you. I want you to know that it must be, 
Edward darling. I want you to remember how happy I have 
been, and how willing I am to part with you, dear, since it is 
God s will that we should be parted. And there is something 
else that I want to say, Edward. Grandmamma told me some¬ 
thing—all about Belinda. I want you to promise me that 
Belinda shall lie happy by and by; for she has suffered so much, 
poor girl! And you will love her, and she will love the baby. 
But you won’t love her quite the same way that you loved me, 
will you, dear ? because you never knew her when she was a 
little child, and very poor. She has never been an orphan, and 
quite lonely, as I have been. You have never been all the world 
to her.” 

The Sycamores was finished by the following midsummer, but 
no one took possession of the newly built house; no brisk up¬ 
holsterer’s men came with three-foot rules and pencils and mem¬ 
orandum-books to take measurements of windows and floors; no 
wagons of splendid furniture made havoc of the gravel-drive be¬ 
fore the principal entrance. The only person who came to the new 
house was a snuff-taking crone from Stanfield, who brought a 
turn-up bedstead, a Dutch clock, and a few minor articles of 
furniture, and encamped in a corner of the best bedroom. 

Edward Arundel, senior, was away in India, fighting under 
Napier and Outram; and Edward Arundel, junior, was at Dan- 
gerfield, under the charge of his grandmother. 

Perhaps the most beautiful monument in one pf the English 
cemeteries at Nice is that tall white marble cross and kneeling 
figure, before which strangers pause to read an inscription to 
the memory of Mary, the beloved wife of Edward Dangerfield 
Arundel. 


EPILOGUE. 

Four years after the completion of that pretty stuccoed villa, 
which seemed destined never to be inhabited, Belinda Lawford 
walked alone up and down the sheltered shrubbery-walk in the 
Grange garden in the fading September daylight. 

Miss Lawford was taller, and more womanly looking than she 
had been on the day of her interrupted wedding. The vivid 
bloom had left her cheeks; but I think she was all the prettier 
because of that delicate pallor, which gave a pensive cast to her 
countenance. She was very grave, and gentle, and good; but 
she had never forgotten the shock of that broken bridal cere¬ 
monial in Hillingsworth Church. 

The major had taken his eldest daughter abroad almost im¬ 
mediately after that July day; and Belinda and her father had 
traveled together very, peacefully, exploring quiet Belgian cities, 
looking at celebrated altar-pieces in dusky cathedrals, and wan¬ 
dering round battle-fields, which the intermingled blood of rival 
nations had once made one crimson swamp. They had been 
nearly a twelvemonth absent, and then Belinda returned to as¬ 
sist at the marriage of a younger sister, and to hear that Edward 



366 JOHN MAJRCHMONT'S LEGACY,. 

Arundel’s wife had died of a lingering pulmonary complaint at 
Nice. 

She was told this, and she was told bow Olivia Marchmont 
still lived with her father at Swampington, and how day by day 
she went the same round from cottage to cottage, visiting the 
sick; teaching little children, or sometimes rough-bearded men, 
to read and write and cipher; reading to old decrepit pension¬ 
ers; listening to long histories of sickness and trial; and exhib¬ 
iting an unwearying patience that was akin to sublimity. Pas¬ 
sion had burned itself out in this woman’s breast, and there was 
nothing in her mind now but remorse, and the desire to perform 
a long penance by reason of which she might in the end be for¬ 
given. 

But Mrs. Marchmont never visited any one a‘lone. Wherever 
she went Barbara Simmons accompanied her, constant as her 
shadow. The Swampington people said this was because the 
rector’s, daughter was not quite right in her mind; and there 
were times when she forgot where she was, and would have 
wandered away in a purposeless manner, Heaven knows where, 
had she not been accompanied by her faithful servant. Clever 
as the Swampington people and the Kemberling people might 
be in finding out the business of their neighbors, they never 
knew that Olivia Marchmont had been consentient to the hiding 
away of her step-daughter. They looked upon her, indeed, 
with considerable respect, as a heroine, by whose exertions Pau l 
Marchmont’s villainy had been discovered. In the hurry and 
confusion of 4he scene at Hillingsworth Church, nobody had 
taken heed of Olivia’s incoherent self-accusations. Hubert 
Arundel was therefore spared the misery of knowing the extent 
of his daughter’s sin. 

******* 

Belinda Lawford came home in order to be present at her sis¬ 
ter’s wedding; and the old life began again for her, with all the 
old duties that had once been so pleasant. She went about 
them very cheerfully now. She worked for her poor pensioners, 
and took the chief burden of the housekeeping off her mother’s 
hands. But though she jingled her keys with a cheery music 
as she went about the house, and though she often sang to her¬ 
self over her work, the old happy smile rarely lit up her face. 
She went about her duties rather like some widowed matron 
who has lived her life, than a girl before whom the future lies, 
mysterious and unknown. 

It has been said that happiness comes to the sleeper—the 
meaning of which proverb I take to be, that Joy generally comes 
to us when we least look for her lovely face. And it was on 
this September afternoon, when Belinda loitered in the garden 
after her round of small duties was finished, and she was free to 
think or dream at her leisure, that happiness came to her—un¬ 
expected, unhoped-for, supreme; for turning at one end of the 
sheltered alley, she saw Edward Arundel standing at the other 
end, wuth his hat in his hand, and the summer wind blowing 
among his hair. & 

Miss Lawford stopped quite still. The old-fashioned garden 


JOHN MARCHMONTS LEGACY. 


867 


reeled before her eyes, and the hard graveled path seemed to 
become a quaking bog. She could not move; she stood still and 
waited while Edward came toward her. 

“Letitia has told me about you, Linda,” he said; “she has 
told me how true and noble you have been; and she sent me 
here to look for a wife, to make new sunshine in my empty 
home—a young mother to smile upon my motherless boy.” 

Edward and Belinda walked up and down the sheltered alley 
for a long time, talking a great deal of the sad past, a little of 
the fair-seeming future; and it was growing dusk before they 
went in at the old-fashioned half-glass door leading into the 
drawing-room, where Mrs. Law ford and her younger daughters 
were sitting, and where Lydia, who was next to Belinda, and 
had been three years married to the curate of Hillingswortb, 
was nursing her second baby. 

“Has she said yes?” this young matron cried directly; for she 
had been told of Edward’s errand to the Grange; “ but of 
course she has. What else should she say, after refusing all 
manner of people, and giving herself the airs of an old maid ? 
Yes, um pressus Pops, um Aunty Lindy’s going be marriedy- 
parriedy,” concluded the curate’s wife, addressing her three- 
months’ old baby in that peculiar patois which is supposed to be 
intelligible to infants by reason of being unintelligible to every¬ 
body else. 

“ I suppose you are not aware that my future brother-in-law 
is a major ?” said Belinda’s third sister, who had been struggling 
with a variation by Thalberg, all octaves and accidentals, and 
who had twisted herself round upon her music-stool to address 
her sister. “ I suppose you are not aware that you have been 
talking to Major Arundel, who has done all manner of splendid 
things in the Punjaub? Papa told us all about it five minutes 
ago.” 

It was as much as Belinda could do to support the clamorous 
felicitations of her sisters, especially the unmarried damsels, 
who w-ere eager to exhibit themselves in the capacity of bride- 
maids; but by and by, after dinner, the curate’s wife drew her 
sisters away from that shadowy window in which Edward 
Arundel and Belinda were sitting, and the lovers were left to 
themselves. 

That evening was very peaceful, very happy, and there were 
many other evenings like it before Edward and Belinda com¬ 
pleted that ceremonial which they had left unfinished more than 
five years before. 

The Sycamores was very prettily furnished under Belinda’s 
superintendence; and as Reginald Arundel had lately married, 
Edward’s mother came to live with her younger son, and brought 
with her the idolized grandchild, who was now a tall, yellow- 
haired boy of six years old. 

There was only one room in the Sycamores which was never 
tenanted by any one of that little household except Edward him¬ 
self, who kept the key of the little chamber in his writing-desk, 
and only allowed the servants to go in at stated intervals to keep 
everything bright and orderly in the apartment. 


868 


JOHN MARCIIMONT'S LEGACY. 


This shut-up chamber was the boudoir which Edward Arun¬ 
del had planned for his first wife. He had ordered it to be fur¬ 
nished with the very furniture which he had intended for Mary. 
The rosebuds and butterflies on the walls, the guipure curtains 
lined with pale blush-rose silk, the few chosen books in the 
little cabinet near the fireplace, the Dresden breakfast-service, 
the statuettes and pictures, were things he had fixed upon long 
ago in his own mind as the decorations for hie wife’s apart¬ 
ments. He went into the room now and then, and looked at his 
first wife’s picture—a crayon sketch taken in London before 
Mary and her husband started for the south of France. He looked 
a little wistfully at this picture, even when he was happiest in 
the new ties that bound him to life, and all that is brightest in 
life. , . , 

Major Arundel took his eldest son into this room one day, 
when young Edward was eight or nine years old, and showed 
the boy his mother’s portrait. 

“ When you are a man this place will be yours, Edward,” the 
father said. “ You can give your wife this room, although I 
have never given it to mine. You will tell her that it w T as built 
for your mother, and that it was built for her by a husband 
who, even when most grateful to God for every new blessing 
he enjoyed, never ceased to be sorry for the loss of his first 
love.” 

And so I leave my soldier-hero to repose upon laurels that 
have been hardly won, and secure in that modified happiness 
which is chastened by the memory of sorrow. I leave him with 
bright children crowding round his knees, a loving wife smiling 
at him across those fair childish heads. I leave him happy, and 
good, and useful, filling his place in the world and bringing up 
his children to be wise and virtuous men and women in the days 
that are to come. I leave him, above all, with the serene lamp 
of faith forever burning in his soul, lighting the image of that 
other world in which there is neither marrying nor giving in 
marriage, and where his dead wife will smile upon him from 
amidst the vast throng of angel faces—a child forever and ever 
before the throne of God. 


[the end.] 














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